The Fifth Year
by Miss Starfire
Summary: SEQUEL TO THE FOURTH YEAR. The greatest suffering a parent can know is the loss of a child, and Tony Stark and Pepper Potts-Stark are about to experience first-hand what this painful journey truly means for their lives. Story 7 of 8 of The Last Chronicles.
1. Prologue

**Summary:** SEQUEL TO THE FOURTH YEAR. The greatest suffering a parent can know is the loss of a child, and Tony Stark and Pepper Potts-Stark are about to experience first-hand what this painful journey truly means for their lives. Story 7 of 8 of The Last Chronicles.

**Standard disclaimer for all my stories:** My stories are graphic, angsty, frustrating, filled with cliffhangers, drama and foul language. Read at your own risk – medical issues and subsequent bills are not covered by yours truly ;) If you don't like, please don't read. I appreciate reviews and constructive feedback but if you cannot stand the plot, save yourself and me some time and walk away. You don't have to love all IMAA stories :) I don't own IMAA. My stories are better viewed by using the "half screen" option of FFNET

**THIS IS A SEQUEL TO THE FOURTH YEAR.** Start with The Last Month, then The Last Summer, then The First Year, The Second Year, The Third Year, The Fourth Year and just read your way here.

**READ THOSE FIRST OR BE FOREVER CONFUSED!**

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**The Fifth Year**

**Prologue**

Even the weather was betraying her today. Although it should have not surprised her that everything was against her this morning, it had actually taken her by surprise. The day had started out icily cold, cloudy, rainy and gloomy – just as her heart and soul felt, but before it was time to leave the penthouse, Mother Nature had done a 180º on her. The sun had come up, the skies had cleared, the birds sang and the rain in its wake had left behind a triple set of bright, colorful rainbows. All in the month of December!

No one seemed to understand her pain, not even Mother Nature. Or perhaps it was just that no one other than her cared.

Then again, believing that no one was hurting as much as her was a lie – a disrespectful one, at that. Her son had been loved by so many people besides her and every single one of them was here today to say goodbye to the bundle of joy. She had silently thanked every single one of them by simply returning the gaze full of disbelief and sadness that everyone sported in their eyes with one of her own. She had a lot of grief to give and plenty of sadness to go around. What she lacked, however, was the will to speak, to wail, to _love_.

Even in the depths of her never-ending despair, her mind fought for an opportunity to be heard. It wanted so desperately to point out that she was not the single most affected person in this entire ordeal. There was one other person, the other half that had made her son become a reality in her life, who was also suffering at the same lengths as her. Even if he had been able to make all the arrangements, even if he had been the only voice of the family for now, even if he still had enough sanity to organize the event and not break down crying like she had, that did not mean that his heart was not as broken as hers.

None of that meant that he was not in bone-deep pain.

She saw it in the way he stared into the nothingness when he believed that no one was looking. She saw it in his slow, defeated gait, which no longer spoke volumes of his pride and self-confidence that he had before radiated in loads with every step he took. His electric blue eyes no longer sparkled. His voice was strained and almost mechanical. His responses were short, calculated and devoid of any _love_.

_Love._

Maybe, just maybe, he had also forgotten how to love.

Or so she had thought and hoped for she felt it unfair that she could no longer reciprocate the feelings that had once fueled the fire within her; the same fire that had driven her to move mountains to be with him. Sometimes, she was certain that he had given up on her as well, even if only ten days had passed since their perfect world had been shattered, but every time she had been wrong.

Sometimes, she had been certain, that her genius boy had finally had enough of her disinterest, her apathy, her distant form. She had sworn on her life many times that Tony no longer cared for her, that the loss of their child was so great that he blamed her for it, albeit irrationally, but she hoped that he did. Sometimes she had prayed for Tony to suddenly forget who she was and what they were, if only to not feel guilty about her lack of interest in what they had once been, what they had once accomplished, what they had once lived through together.

Sometimes, she was as sure as ever that he hated her, that he was ready to be rid of her, and as she prepared herself to leave his side forever at the first sign of duress, he would look at her,_ really_ look at her, and her resolve would grind itself to pieces in an instant. Every time he had stared at her since she had woken up after their son had been taken from them, his posture and his blue eyes told her that he had not forgotten about her – they told her that he still deeply cared.

His soft, timid caresses when he thought her asleep were loaded with love and compassion and a terrifying inability to make things right for her. He had always fixed all broken things for her. He had always found a way to ease her pain and please her soul. But this time it was different as he knew that all the riches and intelligence in the world could not bring back the dead. He could have given her anything, taken her anywhere she wanted to go, but the truth was that all she wanted her son and the only place she wanted to be was with him.

And that alone, that single thing she wanted, he could not give to her.

Her thoughts dissipated when she felt his warm touch on her cold skin. She followed him blindly to wherever he wanted to take her. Despite everything that had occurred, she still trusted him wholeheartedly and knew that he would not steer her wrong. Everything around her was a blur, much as how her life felt nowadays, overall. His pull was mindful yet strong, commanding yet flexible, and before she realized what was occurring she found herself standing before the open grave of James Howard Stark.

Her eyes filled with tears again, but as opposed to the many times before now, she cried silent tears. The waterfalls coming from her eyes were evidence of torrents of inner pain and grief, but other than some random sniffs here and there, she made no other sound. It was difficult to stare at the tiny mahogany coffin over her watery eyes but she did her best to look at the final resting place of her only son.

The inventor held her right hand and guided her to grab a fistful of fresh dirt from the pile beneath them, and with the same care that one would have when carrying a piece of very fragile glass, he led her hand towards the three-foot wide hole in the ground. He was standing behind her, his chest pressed against her back, his left palm secured her hip and kept her in place while his right hand held her right fist. Slowly but surely he helped her release the brown substance from her hand and soon enough her hand was empty again.

He pressed a light kiss to her left cheek from his position behind her, intertwined the fingers on his right hand with hers and then rested his forehead against the back of her head. Silence was all that she could hear for the longest time until he finally spoke to her.

"Forgive me, Pepper. I failed you, I know. But please, don't leave."

She closed her eyes shut, wondering how in the hell had he known about her intentions to end it all. She was not sure if he knew what kind of departure she wanted to make, but it appeared as if it was obvious to him that she had long ago lost the will to live. She did not blame him; she had no reason to, but she felt inadequate around him, guilty even, and the last thing she wanted to do was be around anything or anyone that reminded her of what they had lost.

"I still love you," he added after a pause. "I still want you with me."

She failed to verbally respond to his plea and she could almost hear his heart sink, but she could not afford to make any promises to him, especially promises that she was not sure that she could keep. And even after her lack of response, even after her cold demeanor around him and after everyone else had gone, he still held her close and tightly against him, and stood with her by the soon-to-be closed grave until the night fell – until she decided to leave.

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**A/N:** Wow! Talk about depressing! But, I will fix it. Can't say that too many times. I don't have anything else for now but I thought I'd give you something while I continue working on the outline for this story. Also, this gives you time to go buy tissues in bulk and to re-read all the stories as everything in this story and the next heavily reference the other 6 stories before this one. Welcome back, my Faithful Readers!


	2. Chapter 1

**Guest Review Responses**

**Muah: Yay, finally! You have no idea how much i have been pining for a chapter! Update soon please!** – YAY! You're here! I hope you like this one, too!

**Guest: Hey! I was happy when I saw you updated... Then I started reading it and now I'm sad and depressed...*tries to blink away tears* but you will fix it! (You HAVE to fix it)... Noooo Pepper, don't leave - you've already made that mistake before! What happened to Tony? Why didn't he jump of the building? Not that I want him to, but what made him stop? I thought in 'The Fourth Year' you said he took the drop? Are you gonna somehow, magically find away to get the baby alive again? Or was he never dead in the first place? Is Pepper going away? If she is - is it forever? One more question for you... WHY ARE YOU KILLING ME WITH ALL THESE UNANSWERED QUESTIONS!?** – I WILL fix it. In fact, half of it will be fixed by the end of this story. The other half will be fixed in the final story of these _Last Chronicles_. And by fixing I mean GOOD fixing, not breaking-it-more-to-fix-it, kinda fix.

**Guest: EEEK! I can't wait for the next chapie! Updaaaaaate pleeeeeeaaaaaaaase! Ah, gotta go, bye! :D** – Here it is! Grab a box of tissues, my Faithful Reader!

**Guest: Do we need to beg? Very well. I BEG U...PLZ UPDATE... PLZZZZZ**. – No, please don't beg! I wanted to update MUCH sooner. I missed the story and you guys too!

**Guest: Hope you update soon**! – I wish I could've done it sooner, I swear. But… well, here's why I didn't:

**A/N:** Remember how I had to sell my house and move? And then how I was homeless for the summer, living with relatives? Then I got a job, and I had to move again. And just as I was happy that everything was getting back to normal, my laptop died. And once I got it fixed, I was in a car accident. A lady rear-ended me and my hubby had to drive me everywhere while my car got fixed. And then I got my car fixed, I sat to write this story… and my upstairs neighbor's kids started a fire in the apartment and the sprinklers went off… and my apartment flooded.

I. Kid. You. Not.

But, here I am, back from the dead, flooded apartment still drying, and I hope that this will hold you up until my next update. I've been going back to re-read all the stories that led us here, and I've tweaked and updated TLM. I just finished re-reading TLS and will also update it soon, and I'll start with T1Y very soon. I'll probably have to re-read them all before I can update again just so that I make sure I get all the answers for you guys. All I ask is that you be patient with me… EXTREMELY patient… time wise and plot wise.

Oh, the plot! The plot of this one rivals T2Y. You remember that one? But there will be Pepperony angst only for a couple of chapters here, tops, not the entire story. Silver linings, right?

And now, on with the story!

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**Chapter 1: January**

What a shitty way this was to receive the New Year: completely alone save for a few bottles of wine and a pack of cigarettes, sitting on the ground on the balcony of your own home – a building with your goddamned name written all over it – with a great view of the fireworks around the city that celebrated the midnight ball drop in Times Square, with nobody willing to share the scene, the sounds of people singing _Auld Lang Syne_ and painfully reminiscing about how perfect one's life was a year ago.

A year ago, Tony Stark had been at the top of the world. His company had been thriving, he had reunited with the woman he loved, he had recently asked her to marry him, and they had been readying to have a baby together – a baby he had not known was his in the first place, but was looking forward to meeting and raising as if it were. He had had everything and anything he had always wanted, and had planned for the future of his little family as if nothing could change so drastically in just a few months. Yet, as with many recent experiences in his life, he had been completely wrong about what the future was going to bring.

He was not sure if it was the bitter cold around him, the falling snow or the combination of city aromas in the air, but he reeked of pity and despair. He smelled like disappointment and defeat, heartbreak and a shattered soul, sadness and hopelessness, cigarettes and liquor, and he perhaps even carried the scent of death. The scent of death was the one that worried him the most, since the rest he could wash off with a load of cash, a good night's sleep or a warm shower. There was no cure for the smell of death; no absolution in any way, shape or form. The scent of death was carried deep within the body, in the innermost parts of the heart and soul, and once it made home of your innards, nothing short of a miracle would make it disappear.

Nothing short of a miracle – and he had already received too many of those in one lifetime, to expect one more.

"_Rhodey, please," Tony said, head hung and his right hand holding his weight against the wall. "I want her back." He then lifted his head to stare at Rhodey and placed his left palm onto his chest. "I need her back, Rhodey. What… what do I need?"_

_ Rhodey swallowed hard and his once-tense shoulders suddenly sagged. He looked away for a second and when his eyes returned to his friend, he sighed._

_ "A miracle, man. That's what you need."_

Yes. He had received too many of those.

His first miracle ever had been surviving a plane crash that had been thought to be the cause of his father's death. The second miracle had been surviving the one too many times his mechanical heart had given up on him. The third miracle had been finding his father was alive, and while he was at it, getting him back in one piece. The fourth miracle had been finding Pepper alive after everything she had gone through under Whitney's hands – even after no one thought she was still alive.

The fifth miracle had come in the form of his redhead and him avoiding certain death at different points in their lives since he had tasked himself with helping Pepper regain the life she had lost after returning from an almost tragic fate. The sixth miracle was Pepper and he making amends after all the mistakes they had made in the past. Being able to be together after lying to each other, playing games and making stupid decisions in a never-ending spiral of misunderstands and blinding love was an enormous miracle in and of itself. Perhaps even big enough to be called his seventh miracle to date.

The eighth miracle was their son: the little boy who had almost not made it due to the difficulty his development and birth had had on the ginger, but who still had made it to this world in the very end. The ninth miracle was the fact that he himself was still alive and breathing even after finding out Extremis was slowly killing him – an issue he was yet to resolve. The tenth and final miracle he could count on for now, was the fact that Pepper was yet to leave his side once and for all, even though being in the same room at the same time had not been something they had been able to do since the day their son had been lost.

Their son. Lost. Gone. Dead.

_Dead_, Tony repeated in his mind. Dead as the night he was in. Dead as the year that had ceased to exist, just seconds ago. Dead as his hope that he and Pepper would bounce back from this particular challenge; just as they had been able to bounce back from all the other ones before. Dead as his relationship with his beloved, albeit slowly crumbling wife, seemed to be.

Dead.

Gone.

Lost.

Just like their son.

Oh, the humanity! The irony! The cruel joke of it all!

But saying this was a cruel joke of life just did not cut it. It was more than that. It was a carefully calculated punch to the face, the stomach, the balls, the heart and the soul. It was the final testament to Tony and Pepper's slowly decaying luck. The cards had already been dealt, the hand used, and the aftermath of the struggles, tries and trail of sweat and tears had led here; to this point in time. To a reality where his first-born child was just another tombstone in a lonely, cold and bitter graveyard.

Just a memory. Nothing more.

"Memories," Tony whispered before inhaling and exhaling his cigarette for the last time, and then threw it on the floor, next to his feet.

As he eyed the leftover sample of the addiction he had taken up and had been abusing for weeks, and the more time that had passed, the more it seemed to the inventor that memories were all he had left of his thriving days. Slowly but surely, the physical proof of his successful life had been taken away from him, leaving nothing more than pictures, mementos and vague images in his mind of the good things he had worked so hard to obtain.

His mother had died at a young age. His heart had been damaged for years, and the once cure for it was now killing him. His son had died suddenly, without warning and seemingly without reason, and now his wife was slowly detaching herself from the world and from him.

Memories: all he had left.

Memories: the one thing he had tried so desperately to make Pepper forget.

Memories: the one thing he himself now held onto for dear life.

_Fuck irony_, Tony thought with bitterness and rubbed his eyes with his right index finger and thumb. _I don't care what anyone thinks or says: Pepper and I don't deserve this._

Unfortunately for him, someone out there thought that they did, and this individual had been, for many years, taking steps against him and the redhead to ensure that they suffered to their last breath – a last breath that Tony had almost taken, weeks ago, when his son had died.

_I need some air._

The genius slowly and stumblingly stood up from the floor of the balcony, clinging onto anything he could to keep his ass from slamming onto the concrete ground. It took his brain, ears and eyes a few minutes to focus, but once the vertigo diminished, he began taking small steps towards the balcony rail.

The snow had picked up in intensity in the last five minutes or so, but he just could not give a flying fuck that he was underdressed for the inclement weather. It had been a while since he had felt anything other than emotional pain, and after taking one too many beatings as Iron Man, frigid conditions did not make him bat an eye. In fact, he preferred taking a physical pounding at the moment; at least those bruises would eventually heal without leaving a mark.

His hands held onto the rail and he looked down. The scene was much more appealing than the one he had witnessed when on the roof of the hospital after pulling Howie's cold body from Pepper's disbelieving one. He still remembered what had crossed his mind seconds before he had made the decision to let his body fall to the ground. He still felt regret for what he had almost done to himself and to his redhead. He still remembered the words, uttered by his one and only, that had pushed him off the edge, both literally and metaphorically.

"_You… swore…" she licked her lips. "You __**swore**__ you… wouldn't… let anything… anything happen… to him. You __**lied**__…you…lied…"_

_He froze at her words. He knew what she was talking about. He remembered his promise to her; another promise to her that he had broken. Another empty agreement he had failed to fulfill. From all the times he had failed her, from all the ways he had disappointed her; this was the worst one for him._

_All he could think of doing now was running. _

_So he made damn sure that he did._

_He ran out of the room, down the hall, up the stairs and to the edge of the roof. He stood by it; tempted by the sweet release of death that awaited him should he decide to take the plunge. It was so simple, so easy to take the one step, so much __**easier**__ to just let go of it all than to deal with the aftermath of this living nightmare that would not end. He could do it too, he knew. There was nothing to stop him from doing so and by the time anyone found out what he had done, it would have been too late._

_Too late; just as it had been for his son._

_ Too late; just as it was for his life._

_Too late, just as it was to keep the promise he had made to her._

_ His eyes traveled from the long fall to the contiguous land across the street; the despised piece of property that held the final resting places of many lost souls. The poorly located place of mourning. The unfriendly and unwanted next-door neighbor. The motherfucking lot that would soon hold the lifeless body of James Howard Stark._

_ Devoid of care, numb to the world, the inventor took the drop._

_ He closed his eyes so as not see when the concrete finally split open his skull, but the feeling of freedom never came. He waited and waited, even flinched in anticipation for a few seconds, but when all he felt was the wind hitting his face and his blood going to his head, he finally opened his eyes to realize that he had traveled no more than two feet, at most._

_ Dangling from the edge of the roof was his body, held tightly by his left ankle by the man that had been both his savior and condemner at several points in his life. The scowl that marred his face was the sure indicator of his infinite disapproval of Tony's cowardly actions and the only warning Tony needed before he braced for what was to come._

_ Gene tightened the grip on the inventor's ankle before he pulled him up from the edge, over his head and smashed his back against the concrete floor. The hit made the air inside Tony's lungs come out in one swift move, and he was certain that he had also partially hit the back of his head on his way down. Not having Extremis activated in him was starting to hurt. The lack of oxygen burned him from the inside out, and had he not already been in so much pain as he already was, he would have whimpered in agony when Gene picked him up by his throat and held him at least two feet above the ground._

_ "What the hell do you think you're doing, Stark?"_

_ "I was about… to ask you the… same thing, Mandarin." Tony replied slowly as he exhaled in sharp breaths. Gene was both keeping him up in the air and choking him lightly with his left hand, but he was not pressing hard enough to entirely constraint the intake of oxygen in the blue-eyed boy's body._

_ "What does it look like I'm doing, you ass? I'm keeping Pepper from becoming a widow. I didn't save you and her so many times, just so that you could end it all when the going got tough."_

_ "I…" Tony coughed to clear his throat. "I wouldn't call… my current predicament… just a __**tough situation**__. In case… you haven't noticed… my wife and I… just lost our son… you fucking bastard!"_

_ "And your wife was about to lose her husband, too, on the same day, because you're an irresponsible and ungrateful son of a bitch!"_

_ Without warning, Gene let go of Tony's neck and the inventor hit the ground, this time face first. He was able to somewhat cushion the blow by protecting the front of his body with his arms and legs, but the effort would later show itself when bruises formed on his elbows and knees. He remained for a moment where he had landed, taking in the much needed air that Gene had deprived him of, and when he finally felt ready to squabble with the man before him, Tony then stood up._

_ "Are you done here?" Tony asked, eyes narrowed, as he cleared his clothes and skin of the dust he had acquired in the last couple of minutes. "I have to go say goodbye to my son."_

_ "I think I should be asking you that question, seeing as you almost didn't get to say goodbye to him, but instead were just about to join him."_

_ "What are you: my conscience, now?" Tony spat and threw his hands in the air. He knew there was no one to really blame for his son's fate, but that did not make the pain go away. _

_The amount of anger, sadness and frustration he currently felt could not be released on anyone he truly cared about without running the risk of deeply hurting them. Gene, however, him he could tell off all day long. Gene was the one person Tony had not wanted to see at the moment, but he was also the one person he could unleash his anger against without remorse._

_"Don't you have something better to do, Gene? Like, let's say, torturing those new recruits that are not yet Tong-ready material?"_

_ "You're very lousy at giving thanks, Stark."_

_ "Giving thanks? For what?"_

_ "For stopping you from making a mistake, for one. And for two, for my generosity and mercy at __**not**__ just doing Pepper a favor right now and ridding her life of your petty one."_

_ Tony rolled his eyes. "Is that all you have to say? You sound like a broken record, you know?"_

_ "You should know what that sounds like," Gene smirked. "You've told her the same story, over and over again, about how you wouldn't let anything happen to her or your son, and yet they have both been in grave danger thanks to you… not in spite of you."_

_ Tony held back a growl. "Think you can do a better job than me?"_

_ "I know so. And if it wasn't because Pepper feels strongly for you, I'd have taken her away with me a long time ago. I should've just found her on my own and let you think she was gone. She should've been with me."_

_ The scowl on Tony's face slowly turned into a look of shock when it finally dawned on him what the Mandarin had meant to imply – when Tony finally understood why Gene had done what he had done for them both. All this time, the blue-eyed boy had thought that Gene's protectiveness over the redhead originated from the loyalty Pepper had once had for the Mandarin alter ego, or perhaps due to the same sense of innate guardianship that had made Happy and Rhodey watch out for their friend. _

_Tony had been mistaken, however, and he could now see that Gene's feelings for Pepper were beyond those of a simple friendship or brotherly love. Gene had been there for Pepper when Tony had not. Gene had only responded to Tony's inquiries for help when he had learned that Pepper's safety was involved. Gene had all but tortured Whitney for the sake of Pepper's recovery. Gene had taken matters in his own hands to assure that the blonde could never harm the redhead ever again. Gene had been the one Pepper had turned to when Tony had made the wrong moves. Gene had been the one that had done everything in his power to see a smile form on Pepper's face, even if that meant letting her go._

_Gene had done, in his own way, the same things that Tony had attempted to do for his one and only, in an effort to right any wrongs. And the only reason that Gene Khan would devote his time and efforts to ensure the happiness of Pepper Potts was the same reason why Tony Stark went through great lengths to protect her. Tony Stark had thought himself different from Gene Khan in many regards, but for the first time since ever meeting him, the inventor now found one truly genuine common denominator in their lives: they both loved Pepper Potts._

_ And at this very moment, Tony felt that perhaps Gene __**was**__ better suited for his wife. Perhaps Gene Khan, despite his arrogant nature and power-hungry lifestyle, was the actual perfect match for his redhead. Perhaps, it appeared to him, that Gene Khan was the one person who could give Pepper the one thing Tony Stark himself could never hope to reward her with: a happy, fulfilling, long, danger-free life._

"Thinking of jumping off again?"

Tony closed his eyes and exhaled slowly. The timing was impeccable for his visitor, and for a moment Tony wondered if Gene Khan just knew when to show up. Perhaps he had rigged his tower to have hidden cameras watching the couple's every move. Or perhaps he just had a way of sensing when Pepper was in distress. Whatever the reason or method was, it would never cease to amaze the inventor how in tune with their lives Gene Khan truly was, despite how far away he lived.

"You can say _yes_," Gene said and walked closer to the rail to stand to Tony's left. "This time, I won't stop you."

"I'm not jumping," Tony retorted and finally opened his eyes to stare at Gene from the corner of one of them. "That won't solve anyone's issues."

"You're a slow learner," Gene said.

"But I learn," Tony replied before he closed his eyes again when a memory of his_ better_ days, returned to him.

_He had spent the last hour pondering the same question over and over again, and there was no solution in sight to his predicament. Pepper had become an indispensable part of his life – both as a friend and as the person he loved romantically – and he could not imagine living his life without her with him in at least one of the aforementioned capacities. Becoming friends again had been easy enough so far, and he had picked up on the possibility that Pepper was starting to see him in a new light, too, but he could not afford to be naïve about it. Pepper was safer not being romantically involved with him; being his friend was already dangerous enough._

_His logical side told him, however, that it was not up to him to make this choice for her. They were, or had been at some point, a couple and the decision to stop seeing each other should be one that involved both of their points of view. Nevertheless, given the current circumstances, it was his decision and his decision alone to make. _

_He knew he would have wanted to have some say in whether they remained together if the tables were turned, but he was a coward and preferred not to delve in the possibility that she would choose to stay by his side despite the dangers, because that would entail her trusting him to make sure nothing got in their away again. He was too scared to break that trust and let her down – again. If she did stay and something even worse happened to her because of it, he would hate himself for the rest of his empty life, which would not be long once Gene Khan found out, anyway. He preferred never to let her that far into his heart ever again than face the fact that he felt inadequate to protect her._

_And for that too, he hated himself. Where was the young man that did not back away from a challenge? Where was the young man that had survived in spite of the odds? When had he lost his nerve?_

_He did not have to think about it much to pinpoint the moment he had lost his nerve. He knew he had lost part of his bravado when he had found her nearly-dead body in the submarine. There he had been, suited up and ready to take on anything, and nothing he had in his large arsenal of weapons could have made it right for her; nothing ever would. He had been lucky that Gene had been around to help him or he would have died searching for her._

_ However, at the end of the day, all the pondering, all the wondering, all the musings, all the questions and possible worse-case scenarios in the world always came back down to a simple fact; an undeniable truth: he loved her. He truly and absolutely loved her – he loved her too much to let her go._

_**Maybe I don't have to let her go**_**, he thought. **_**Whitney, Stane and Zhang were the only ones that ever really tried attacking Pepper to get back at me or make me do something I didn't want to do. There are hardly any villains left thanks to Justin Hammer… and the ones that are around… Pepper could take them down on her own if she wanted to…**_

Oh, how wrong had he been! Again! Letting her go should have been his answer. Letting her go should have been his only action plan. Letting her go, just as Gene had done, should have been his only choice.

"She's not any better today," Tony said when his mind decided to give him a break at remembering all the times he had had the opportunity to prevent this painful life for her. "I'm sure you can break into our room if you wanted to, but I haven't dared to do that. I… I haven't seen her in a week. But I know she's in there."

"How long are you going to let her grieve on her own?" Gene asked in a tone that Tony surprisingly found to not be one of condescension, anger or accusation, but only of true concern for Pepper's wellbeing.

"As long as she needs," Tony replied when his eyes opened again. "I… I've knocked on the door. I've sent her messages through the pod. I've written her letters and snuck them under the door. I've e-mailed her. I've called her. I've even spoken to her from outside the room. I've told her how I feel. I've told her that I love her and that I miss her and need her. I've… I've let her know that we need to mourn together. But she doesn't answer me. She hasn't said a word to me since the funeral."

The funeral, which had been on December 24th.

"Maybe it's time you barge in there," Gene suggested. "I can't speak from exact experience, but the loss of a loved one is something no one should have to deal with alone."

Tony shifted his head slightly to the left to face Gene, whose eyes were staring into the horizon as he thought about his own mother's death at the hands of Zhang, his face serene. When the genius' head returned to the front again, he instantly remembered all the times he or Pepper had walked away and had let the other deal with pain on their own.

She had run away when she had found out that she was adopted and she had asked him to leave her alone – and he had complied. He had walked out on her in the Makluan Temple when she had been begging him to stay and talk things out. She had walked out of his life after she had realized what he had had Gene do to her memories. He had walked away on her, albeit briefly, when he had found out that she had had Gene affect his memories as well.

And now, Pepper had walked away from him, from the entire world, the moment he had had Nurse Owen drug her so that he could tear their son out of her hands. Tony doubted there was any fixing this particular detachment in a long time, perhaps even at all; mostly because he had no idea how to start making things better for them both.

"You're probably right. A week without seeing her is enough," Tony said. "She may say she doesn't want to see me, but I want to see her. I want to be there for her."

"Then, you should."

"I will," Tony said as he saw Gene become enveloped in the power of the rings to turn into the Mandarin.

"And while you're at it," Gene began, "make sure she knows that this didn't happen because she was not here enough when she was in school."

Tony's head recoiled. "She-she thinks that? How do you know that? Did she tell you?"

"No," Mandarin said, three feet above the balcony ground. "She told her box."

Before Tony could truly understand what Gene had said, the Mandarin was gone in the blink of an eye, leaving Tony to ponder what he could do to help his wife, and wonder if he had just truly had the Mandarin visit him to give him helpful advice, of all things. The inventor then stared at the dying fireworks until they were completely faded, and once the New Year's celebration in the Big Apple started coming to an end, Tony decided it was time to take matters into his own hands.

He turned around in place, headed back inside his home and made sure that the balcony doors were closed and locked. His once always-pristine, high-rise penthouse had not been cleaned in weeks, and the genius had made the living room his new bedroom even though there were plenty of other rooms available in the home. Pepper had refused to let him inside what had once been their room, and Tony had refused to break down the doors or remove the locks to go inside. The last thing Tony had wanted to do was to further pressure the ginger into doing or saying something they would both later regret.

He had been sleeping on the couch since they had returned home after the baby had died, and neither he nor Pepper had dared to go inside the nursery. In fact, all the Christmas decorations, tree and unwrapped gifts included, were still adorning the entire floor. He had tried to clean up the painful reminders of how their first Christmas Eve's day as a family had turned out to be, but the moment he had stared at the gifts below the tree, particularly the ones with Howie's name on them, he had simply broken down. He did not cry, however; he had not done so at all even if his heart was begging for release, but a meek glimpse at what could have been his son's first Christmas experience was all he needed to abandon the cleaning task altogether.

Many people had come to the funeral even though it had been inadvertently scheduled on a day of celebration and family gatherings, and many more had sent their regards and condolences in the form of letters, cards, flowers and gifts. Tony had been surprised when he had found out that some of the former _hospital inmates_ that Pepper had met when she had woken up after Whitney's ordeal, had sent the couple sympathy gifts as well. Tony had no idea that the impact Pepper had left on the _Tripped on the_ _IV Line Guy_ and the _Burst My Spleen Guy_ had been so powerful. But then again, it had not taken Pepper long to earn his trust and attention, so he figured that the fact that even Glenda Barnes and many more of the girls Pepper had helped save from the Maggia, Dr. Betty Ross, Janet Van Dyne, Jean Grey and Captain Carol Danvers had also sent condolence tokens, spoke volumes of the lives the ginger had changed and touched. Even Maya Hansen and Scott Summers had sent their regrets.

The board members, save for Mitch Richards, had all showed up at the burial as well. Bambi, Happy, Virgil, Diane, Howard and Trish had all teamed up together and had taken over the company issues for now. They had even been in charge of making sure that the Annual Stark Solutions Christmas Party still took place. The event had not been as lively as the years before, especially when a moment of silence had been observed in the CEOs' honor, but everyone else's lives could not be placed on hold.

Loretta had called several times, and she had even flown from Pittsburgh to New York a couple of times already to talk to her daughter who had refused to acknowledge her adoptive mother, or anyone for that matter, during the funeral and burial of her only son. Loretta's efforts had been in vain, though, since Tony had not allowed the woman to even come inside the living room. The same had been the case for Rhodey and Happy, and not even the stubborn Roberta Rhodes had made it past the stairs that led to the floor they were on.

Jarvis had tried cleaning after them, cooking for them even, but Tony had not allowed the faithful butler to come near his home at all. Everyone in the family had tried showing their support in one way or another, but Tony had eventually left them all out of the penthouse by blocking access to the entire floor. It was not as if he did not need or want their help, but he truly believed that until he and Pepper could work things out, the interference of outside parties would only hinder the already painful road to recovery they both had ahead of themselves.

Gene had been the first and only person so far to have seen him since the funeral, and not even the inventor himself had seen the redhead in days. He had kept a close eye on her vital signs, however, by using the systems he had installed in the home after that night scare when he had thought his son had been kidnapped. The cameras in his bedroom, though, were all covered by whatever Pepper had used to keep him from watching her from afar. She had not been able to do much about the infrared and other sensors, but the live feed cameras she had made sure to kill off almost immediately after Tony had "moved in" to the living room.

Tony knew that Pepper was still alive and breathing, and he had caught notice of certain food items gone missing from the kitchen at certain points during the week, suggesting to him that Pepper had snuck out of the room to eat when he was not around or asleep. His clothes had also slowly appeared in the living room, and many of his personal belongings that he had kept on his side of the room had also found their way into the living room and/or kitchen. It had only taken her three days to fully kick him out of their bedroom, but the message had been received by the inventor on day one, the moment she had rigged the locks: _get out and_ _stay out_.

"Enough is enough," Tony whispered as he walked towards the double doors that kept him from seeing his wife. "We need to talk this out. We need to be together right now."

He stood by the doors for a moment, inhaled deeply and then knocked on the door, and to his surprise, before his words even left his lips, the door opened up when his knuckles made contact with the wood. His gaze then traveled to the knob that had been locked for days, and he quickly realized that the bolts were there no more. He lifted his eyes once more to stare at the empty bed before him and he slowly and carefully made his way inside the bedroom. He took only a couple of steps inside before he completely stopped and allowed his eyeballs to analyze the scene.

As he had suspected, he found half-eaten snacks, some still in their wrappers, throughout the room. The curtains were open but the blinds were closed, and upon further inspection of the camera equipment, he came to the realization that Pepper had inked over the lenses with permanent marker. The bed was unmade and littered with clothes, and for a second Tony feared that he had just walked in to Pepper packing up to leave for good.

"Pepper?" Tony asked after he gulped. He took a fearful third step and then a fourth, and soon his legs took him to the wall-to-wall closet they both shared. He was partially relieved when he saw that her clothes were still there, as were the luggage bags, but the panic button had already been pressed within him. His fears led him to the bathroom when he saw that the light was on, and when he partly opened the door to said room, he gasped in surprise.

"No!"

He slammed open the door and ran inside, almost in disbelief of what he was seeing. While the chaos in the bedroom had been shocking, it had been more than expected given the circumstances. The disarray in the bathroom, however, was indicative of something much more menacing and serious than some dirty clothes on the bed.

"Pepper!" Tony yelled at the top of his lungs while he fell to his knees. "Pepper, are you in here?"

The shower was clean and dry but the outer floor was not, and even though various items covered the tiled ground – towels, shampoo bottles, makeup bags, bath sponges, feminine hygiene products and the sort, the three most prominent objects for the inventor were the red locks of hair, the scissors and the blood. Mostly, the blood.

"No, Pepper. What have you done?"

He grabbed one of the beautiful locks of hair that were no longer part of the ginger's head and he quickly confirmed that it belonged to his wife. In the years following the Whitney incident, Pepper had been proud of how long her hair had gotten. It had reached her waist even if she had had it layered, and its wavy shape that Tony loved so much had made its appearance a few times when she did not pull it up or when she did not feel like straightening out her hair in the morning.

The hair on the floor explained the scissors, but it did not explain the reason why the scissors, a few towels and the floor were covered in fresh blood.

"PEPPER? Pepper! Where are you?"

Even though he was still shaken, Tony stood up from the bathroom floor and searched for Pepper everywhere in the penthouse; nursery included, much to his sorrow. He briefly panicked when he realized that the security system had been turned off, the cameras rigged, and that her Stark Pod had been left behind, shattered in a dozen pieces that now littered the lab's floor, and it was not until he remembered that he still had a way to find her that he saw the light at the end of tunnel.

Time was of essence, however, and without the ability to put on his suit, his options to get to her fast and in a hurry were limited. He had no idea of how long ago she had left the penthouse, and Gene had not said anything about Pepper leaving the building, so her departure must have occurred either just before the Mandarin had arrived or shortly after he had left. He doubted that Gene had aided her in escaping her self-appointed prison, but for a moment he did wonder if the Mandarin had made good on his promise to keep Pepper safe at all costs.

_No_, Tony shook his head to clear his silly thoughts. _The tracker… the tracker says she's still nearby. I just… I just need to go get her back._

He transferred the coordinates of the location of her arm tracker – the same one he had used on her during the Maggia stakeout – to his Stark Pod. He gave the device a few seconds to name said location, and when he realized where she was, he breathed a sigh of relief. Of course she had gone back to that forsaken place! She had done so the first time she had felt cornered in her life! He had actually forgotten that said location had held a deeper meaning for them in the past before the Maggia had taken it over, but it was simply because it was also another place where Pepper had almost died.

Tony knew that after the FBI had cleared the place of everyone and everything in it, it had been deemed a condemned property. This fact, however, would not stop anyone from entering the building if they so wished to, especially when that someone wanted to be anywhere except at home, and this was exactly what Pepper was looking for: a way out – a place to be that was not her own; a place where she could rest in peace.

As he ran towards the exit of the home, down the hall and to the private elevator that would take him to the executive garage, Tony could not help but to worry about what he would find once he arrived at the abandoned warehouse. He did not fear breaking city ordinance by trespassing into a dilapidated building. He did not fear facing the wrath of his wife when she saw him there. He did not even fear the earful he would get from their friends and family when they found what had occurred.

The only thing that Tony Stark truly feared at this moment was arriving too late. The only thing that the billionaire could not help but to be terrified about was arriving at a scene where nothing could be done for his redhead. Losing her was the only thing that truly frightened him, and the shadow that still permeated his home from time to time – the one that had managed to infiltrate it for many years without being seen – knew that very damn well.

_Stay put, Pepper. I'm going to get you back._

xxxXXXxxx

When Pepper had mentioned to him, years ago, that the Stark Bike should be able to fly (or at least his and hers should), he had considered the option as a viable possibility, but he had not gotten around to actually work on the design modification until a few months ago. The fact that he had found himself with plenty of time after he had been released from the Helicarrier and had been left with no option but to quit Iron Man business, had led to him creating and modifying many inventions he would have never otherwise made a reality if time had not been on his side.

Strapping on an XS-117 in the RT-149 would soon become one of the best ideas Pepper had ever given him since, unbeknownst to her, she had given him, years ago, the means he had needed to search for her now that his suit of armor was not to be touched by him.

_Almost there._

The Stark Pod's beeping intensified as Tony's moving location got closer to the warehouse, and had he not seen the cloud of thick smoke that stood out even in the dark, early hours of the New Year, his speed would have not increased to unsafe limits. Just as the day he had ignored all the warning signs of his armor when he had rushed to the hospital the night he had found out that Pepper was with child, Tony turned off the alarms that told him that flying his Stark Bike at neck-breaking speed was not ideal for the preservation of his life, especially with the amount of alcohol in his system. All he wanted was to get to the warehouse already, and as he swiftly and gracefully landed on the ground, he silently prayed and hoped that Pepper was not inside the inferno that had once been their _safe house_.

He took out his pod from his pocket and quickly made use of it to find the location of the tracker. The fire that was currently ravaging the building was intense and it made his search that much more difficult for him. The smoke wasted no time in affecting his nostrils and eyes, and he instantly regretted ever killing Rhona Erwin, as it had been this action that prevented him from being Iron Man when he needed it the most – just as it was the case now.

_Come on, Pepper_, Tony thought. _Where are you? Please be OK! Please be outside!_

He used his pod to scan the area, including the flames that now reached several feet into the air. The falling snow was keeping some of the fire at bay, but it was not strong enough to put out the blaze altogether. The few minutes he had so far spent looking for her felt like hours, and it was not until he heard an explosion nearby that made him turn around towards his bike that he realized that Pepper was very much alive.

"What the _hell_?"

At first, he had thought that the small explosion behind him had been instigated by the fire itself, but when he saw that another fire had just erupted – a fire that was now slowly melting his Stark Bike – and he saw that Rescue was standing near it, his mind could not help but to put two and two together even though the complete picture did not make sense to him; even if he did not want to believe what he was seeing.

"Pepper… why… what are you doing?"

The first response he got from Rescue was a physical one, in the form of her lifting his bike above her head, flying a few feet above the ground and then all but throwing it into the larger fire that was the slowly collapsing building. The burning bike hitting the blaze caused yet another explosion, one that just added more fuel to the proverbial fire that was about to erupt between husband and wife.

"Rescue, what is the matter with you?" Tony demanded as he watched the armored heroine land three feet before him. "Have you lost your mind?"

"No," Rescue responded behind the helmet before she pulled back the faceplate. "What I lost was my son."

"Our son," Tony corrected her while he put away his pod. "We both lost him, Pepper. We both suffered the same loss."

"No, we didn't." Pepper said as she retracted her suit into its backpack form and closed the distance between them. "I lost it all. But you, Anthony Stark, didn't lose a thing."

This was the first time Tony had seen Pepper in days, and the first time he had heard her speak since she had screamed at him to not let the nurse take away baby James from her. He could immediately tell, however, that his was not the same Pepper that he had married and whom he loved with every inch of his life. This was not the same Pepper he had made love to, many times before. This was not the same redhead that had saved him a million times over in ways he could not even begin to count.

This woman before him was just a shadow of who she had once been in her life. And if he did not think of something better to do, better to say, he feared that she would forever be lost – forever beyond reach, for him.

"Anthony?" Tony repeated despite knowing better than to question the way she had just addressed him. "What do you mean we didn't and why… your hair… you… you're bleeding, Pep!"

With the dark skies around them, it had taken the mere foot between them combined with the fire near them for Tony to finally see the consequences of Pepper's actions in the bathroom. Her once extremely cared for hair was now uneven; the various lengths having no rhyme or reason at all. It was clear that she had tried to cut it without care, and when he saw that the hair did not have the blood he had seen on the scissors, his eyes immediately began scanning her entire form.

Finding the injury was not difficult once he focused on it, and he could not help himself but to hold her right arm in his two hands. Pepper tried pulling away from his hold a few times, but even without Extremis activated in him he was still much stronger than she was.

"What did you do to your arm, Pepper?" He asked as he took out a handkerchief, one that she had given him many Christmases ago – the only one he had left of the full set after the mutated crow attack had destroyed the rest – and he quickly used it to stop the bleeding on her arm by tying it around the wound. "Did you cut yourself by accident?"

"Let go," Pepper said and finally pulled her arm away from him. "The tracker. I was trying to cut out the fucking tracker you put in me, but it's now embedded in my tissue because it's been there for so long. I can't get it out without cutting a hole in my damned muscle!"

"I… you…" Tony swallowed hard. "You don't have to cut it out. I can… I can turn it off, permanently."

"I don't want it off!" She spat. "I want it out of me! I want nothing to do with it or you! And that stupid piece of shit will always lead you to me! I don't want it to! I want it gone!"

"Pepper," Tony said in the calmest tone of voice he could produce despite his racing heart. "Just… just calm down, Pep. Let's talk about this, alright? Let's go somewhere else and talk about it, please."

"NO!" Pepper yelled. "There's nothing to talk about! You betrayed me, Stark! You let Jimmy die! You let MY son die!"

"Pepper! I… I didn't let him die!" Tony shook his head. "He was already gone when we got to the hospital. He was… he was long gone by the time we got there. Remember? Even by the time Rhodey called us… even then he – "

"LIAR!" She interrupted him, days of seething anger finally coming out. "You just didn't want me to be with him. You didn't want me to spend time with him after I finished with school. You wanted him all for yourself! You wanted him to be with you only or with no one else!"

"Pepper, are you hearing yourself?" Tony asked, hands up in the air in what he prayed resembled a calming gesture. "You-you… you're not making any sense! Why would I kill my son, Pep? Why would I purposefully hurt him? I loved him, Pepper. Just like I love you. Why would I do that to him?"

"Because, Anthony, that's what you do to the ones you love. The ones you care about. Anyone in your life, for that matter. You hurt them. You put them in danger. You let them _die_."

Tony opened his mouth to reply, but nothing but a small whimper came out. How could he deny her claims? How could he deny the accuracy of her statements?

When his attempt at saying anything at all failed again, Pepper took advantage of this lack of retort and continued telling her husband exactly what she thought about him; exactly what she had been telling herself for the past week when it became evident to her that Tony was here to stay, even if she did not want him to. Even if she could not stand his guts.

"Can't say it's bullshit, huh? You just can't. I know you can't. You can't because you know it's true. Me, your dad, Rhodey, Arthur Parks, Obadiah and Whitney Stane, Maya Hansen… my son…" Pepper shook her head. "All of us, all of your loved ones," she air-quoted the last two words. "You've always found a way to make our lives miserable. You just live for it, don t you? You just can't be happy unless someone else suffers because of you, huh?"

"Pepper… no… I… I don't try… I… I don't want…"

"You don't try to, what? To hurt us? You just have a natural talent for it? You just _know_ what to do, what to say and when, so that the ones that had stuck by you, your… your entire life, we… we…"

She closed her eyes when tears began to sting and her throat began to close, and Tony took advantage of the opportunity to embrace her. He felt her flinch on first contact, and for a moment he swore she was going to scream or push him away, but she instead buried herself closer to him, as much as she could in spite of their bodies, and a second after she let out a painful sounding sob that stabbed him in the heart, a flare of fire exploded near them, ending what could have been a tender moment between them – a swift solution to their heightened feelings.

"NO!" Pepper said and took a step back, and Tony had enough sense to not force her to stay in his arms. "I can't do this again! I can't just let you off the hook! It's your fault! It's your fault my son is dead!"

"OUR son, Pepper! And how is it _my_ fault? I… we, _we_ weren't even there when it happened! When whatever it was that killed him, did so!"

"That's right!" Pepper nodded in great approval. "We weren't there because Rhodey wanted us to take a break! A break from us trying so hard to fix the fucking virus _you_ injected yourself with just so that you could still be Iron Man!"

"Pepper, if I hadn't done that, my heart would've given out."

"I know," she deadpanned. "You only did it to help yourself. Just like everything else you do. It's always for your benefit and no one else's."

"I do what's necessary to remain able to protect the ones I care about, Pepper. You should know that. I've done some crazy things, but only because I wanted no one else to have to do them. Anything I've done for the past four years, Pepper… maybe even for the past six, has been to protect my family. To protect you."

"And how successful have you been? Please, tell me of how your ideas have kept me safe! Didn't Whitney take me and you didn't even notice? Wasn't a bounty placed on our heads because of you? Didn't you want me to die giving birth to another one of your kids? Isn't that what your plan was?"

"What?" Tony took a step back and shook his head as if it would help with seeing any heads or tails of what Pepper had just said to him. "How… how do you even think I'd want that?"

"_Well, I'm not sure how much I can help with that," she begrudgingly admitted. "I can try to replicate it to create an antivirus of some sort, but not until S.H.I.E.L.D. gives us that data we requested can we even think about purging you from Extremis."_

_ "I know and thanks to your help, I know I can wait for that, but… but that's not my point."_

_ "OK. What's your point, then?"_

"_Well," he hesitated again, stared left and right and then stared at her once more. "If the virus is not in me anymore, and we can find who's behind these break-ins at home and stop him, I'd like to… for __**us**__ to… have more kids."_

"It… it all makes sense," Pepper said in between crazy-sounding chuckles, her hands holding the sides of her head. "You… you know I can't have another baby of yours… and yet… and yet you wanted me to have another one. That night… that night that Jimmy died… you told me you wanted us to have more kids… you… you knew Jimmy was going to die… and you were getting ready to get me pregnant again so that I would die to. You… you just wanted to get rid of us… you wanted to be freed of having to care for us!"

"Bullshit!" Tony yelled, his anger finally getting the best of him. "Stop coming up with stupid ideas, Pepper! You're just drawing at straws now, out of grief! You know fucking well this is not true. You _know_ I'd rather die before I purposefully hurt you!"

"Then why don't you?" She asked. "Then why don't you die!"

Her angry response was followed by the suit coming back to life and covering her body. Tony's jaw dropped when he saw her activate the armor's offensive systems and aimed them all at him. In the blink of an eye he was a sitting duck, red dots all over his form, and it would only take one of his own weapons touching him for him to be killed. He knew his weapons like the back of his hand, and he knew that Pepper knew them as well as he did. What he had never known until this moment, however, was that Pepper would one day use his own inventions against him. What he had not anticipated – what he had never even considered – was Pepper finally seeing him as the one target that she needed to destroy to _save_ her own life.

He had nowhere to go; nothing to protect himself with. He had no Extremis, no suit, no weapons, no one to call on and, most importantly, he did not have the will to come up with any solution to his current predicament, as he knew that any involvement from anyone else would result in Pepper suffering the same fate he had once endured. S.H.I.E.L.D. would not stand for this. Nick Fury would not let this pass. He would use this to forever get his way out of Stark Solutions. He would use this to make his flying fortress Pepper's new permanent home.

No. He just could not do that to her. He could not let her be the villain in this. He could not let her make the same mistake he had made before, when his anger had blinded him enough to sadistically take someone's life. She was not a killer. She was not a deranged soul. She was not corrupted in the heart as he now was after years of tribulation and despair. She had a choice. A choice he knew he did not believe he had – a choice he did not want to take: letting her go.

He had been here before, many times, staring at the barrel of the gun, and even when he had thought Rhona Erwin would do to him what no else had been able to do, he had lived through that. It had been thanks to Pepper's interference, mind you, but he had found a way out. This time, however, the one person that was responsible for his current predicament, was the same one that had saved him from them before. This time, the only way to save his redhead from walking down the same path of destruction he had become a frequent traveler of, was to do what Gene had done: letting her go.

It always came down to that. Letting her go, even if he loved her – even if he would surely be in pain forever because of it, it was the only way to keep her safe from herself, from him… from it all.

He closed his eyes and inhaled deeply, partially savoring the moment he knew would come to an end quick, fast and in a hurry. He took in her presence before him, engrained in his mind not the derailed form of her she was presently in, but the happy, collected and loving version of her he had grown accustomed to. The version of her that made him weak in the knees and still made him nervous to be near. The version of his girl, his heroine, his friend, his wife, the love of his life – the version of her he had somehow managed to kill.

"Any last words, Stark?" Pepper asked in a steady voice even though she could feel her body tremble. Tears fell down her cheeks, her lips quivered and her heart was racing, and she was not sure why she was even doing this at all. She did not want to kill Tony… she loved him, with all her heart and soul. Despite it all, despite how much her life had been changed for the worse since she had met him, she still loved him. So very much.

"Yes," Tony swallowed hard and opened his eyes again. "I… I have some last words."

"Well then," she found herself saying even though she knew there was no chance in the universe that she would ever pull the trigger on any of the dozens of weapons she had aimed at his body. "What are they? What do you have to say for yourself?"

"Two things," he began as his knees slowly hit the snow-covered ground and his raised arms ended on either side of his head. His eyes glued to the faceplate's brightly lit orifices that he knew held her eyes, and he wished he could see her hazel orbs one last time. Then again, they were currently filled with anger and hate towards him, and this was not how he wanted to remember them or her.

He took another deep breath and another deep swallow before he finally found his voice once more. "The first one: I'm sorry. But I think you already know that."

"Yes," she replied, the blazing fire reflecting off her armored suit. "And it doesn't help at all. What's the second?"

"The second: I… " he inhaled through his nostrils. "I want a divorce."

The moment his statement made it to her ears, every single one of her weapons went offline. She slowly lowered her arms to her sides and she stood still before him for a brief instant. She opened her mouth to say what had just crossed her mind, but the minute she remembered the fate of their son, she forced herself to eat back her words.

"Very well," she uttered. "You'll get what you want."

Without warning, the ginger took to the skies, hanging in the air for a nanosecond to take in his form. He did not even bother to look up at her, and when the words he had just said repeated in her mind, she closed her eyes and took off.

Later on, after Happy had been sent to his location with Pepper's jetpack to get Tony Stark back home, and after Tony had arrived back at his penthouse to find that Pepper's belongings were gone, it was then that it finally dawned on him the extent of his last words to her. She was gone, from his life, for better or for worse.

* * *

**A/N:** Fix it, I will. Now leave a review to tell me how much you love to hate me. Pleaseee?


	3. Chapter 2

**Guest Review Responses**

**apps: We readers really deserve a reward to get the story updated soon this time for so much waiting so far...cant see pepperony anguish anymore...plz fix them forever. – **How is this for fast update? I really need to finish these _Last Chronicles_ before the end of the year. I'm starting Graduate School in January and if I don't finish them before them, I never will! It will be fixed… next chapter… but we need certain things to be said and discovered for now. Go grab some tissues for this one!

**Guest: good to see you your angst. it never gets old. – **I hope this applies to this chapter too!

**Elinorwrites: Oh dear god. This is literally making me cry like a wimp on the bus! Omg, Just tell me that this is gonna end up okay; like Howie getting back to live and Tony saying something as. "Don't ask me to say that I don't love you, Pep" and me crying all over my desk office and peace and rainbows and happy ending. Okay, bye. – **AAAHHH! Tell me about it! We get no love here or in _Arrow_. What are we to do?! It will get better next chapter, pinky-promise that!

**Muah: Even though I really hate you right now, thank you so much for updating! I almost thought you had given up this story! But it seems like you have been extremely unlucky recently, so I will forgive you. Hope you find your luck soon! – **Aww! I hope my luck changes, too. At least so that I can start actually enjoying my weekends with writing. I miss Pepperony, so much!

**Someone:GUGUJGBYVFRTD' OX6KSESP;'G\YFTCFDLUT;LBHNIOPMJOYUYTRTED4YTJUMU ...I can't think of anything better to say than that...other than: UPDATE AS SOON AS YOU CAN! P.S. Wow, I hope your apartment gets better...LOL that sounds weird! – **LOL! My apartment got better this Wednesday. Finally! I'm celebrating with this chapter for you, my Faithful Readers!

**apps: Plz update...waiting eagerly – **Are you stalking me? How did you know I'd update today? ;)

* * *

**Chapter 2: February**

It was amazing what one could do with the gift of time. It was even more amazing what one could do with the gift of unlimited funds. It was triple amazing, however, what one could do with having both at the same time. One could travel the world, do volunteer work, finish school, start up a business, pick up a hobby or, in the case of Pepper Potts-Stark, renovate an entire home, inside and out.

It had started as a simple task of moving out some of the leftover furniture she did not like in her new home, but one thing had led to another, and soon she had begun tackling a larger job than she had expected it to be. She had hired renovation contractors, consulted interior designers and had searched hundreds of pictures and home decoration catalogs online until she had created what she currently needed: an oasis. A personal island. A _safe house_ of her own – one that had not been tainted with the illegal activities of a criminal group. One that she had not burned to the ground in a fit of rage.

And so it was today, over a month after she had moved out of the Stark Solutions penthouse, that she got to enjoy the fruits of her labor. Today was the first day that she had been able to get up without having to worry about workers coming in early to do their work, or worry about materials not getting delivered to the home on time. Today was her first day of true freedom – something she had not experienced in a long time, for diversely unspeakable reasons.

Today was the first day of what she hoped her new life would be.

She sighed loudly and in contentment as she sat down on her new loveseat in the living room, legs on the cushions and bent towards her chest, and she took a moment to scan her surroundings. The home looked nothing like she remembered it to be, and she was certain that if Roberta Rhodes walked into her former home right now, she would not recognize it either. It was inevitable for the ginger, however, to force herself to go through this lengthy and tedious process of physical surroundings renovation in order to help her cope with the loss of her child.

At least that had been what her therapist had said to do. And so far, her therapist had not been wrong, much to her dismay. And damn Jarvis, too, for that matter, for forcing her to go to therapy to deal with James's death, in the first place. Why was everyone else right but her? Why did everyone know what was best for her but herself? Why did Tony Stark know her better than she knew herself?

Even if this home was supposed to be Tony's Christmas gift from her to him. Even if the redhead had bought the Rhodes' home with the intention of giving it to her husband, to tame his anger at learning that the property he had called his second home would be sold, she could not deny that this was exactly what she had needed. She could not deny that space and time were the first ingredients in the recipe of learning how to cope. Perhaps Tony had inadvertently tried to give her that: space, time and moral support, but she was still too angry at him to admit that he had had her best interest at heart, like he always did.

The Christmas gifts never got opened, and Tony would have not known what he missed out on if she had not been using funds from their shared checking account. She knew that the transactions were open for him to see whenever he felt like it via the online system of their bank account, and she had half expected him to demand her to stop using their money for what she was doing, but she was yet to hear a peep out of him. In fact, the only time she had heard anything out of him had been a couple of days after she had moved out of the penthouse, and it had been through an indirect appearance of him via someone else.

Her right hand instinctively went to her now short hair at the memory of it. She already missed her long locks, but there had not been much to work with after she had gone bat shit crazy and had defiled the sanctity of her impeccable mane. She could not, for the life of her, remember what had crossed her mind when she had stood in front of the bathroom mirror and had cut her hair, but it really did not matter anymore. What was done was done, and all she could do right now was silently, and begrudgingly, thank Tony Stark for watching out for her, even if they were heading for a divorce.

Her eyes stopped scanning the room and she focused on her reflection in the large, ceiling-to-floor mirror she had had installed in the living room to make the area look bigger than it really was. She bobbed her head from side to side to see her new haircut from different angles before she closed her eyes and looked down to her lap, and even though it was similar to what her hairstyle had been in high school, she felt different somehow. Even if her hair resembled her old hairdo, even if she today wore the typical outfits she had used in high school, she knew that the person looking back at her was nothing like the person she had been six years ago. In the blink of an eye, everything in her life had changed for her.

_She curled up into a ball, just like she had done so for the past three days, ignoring the effects that a cold floor had on her injured form. There was no other mattress in the home other than the one Tony had used when he had lived here, and she refused to use that one at all costs. It still smelled like him, just like the entire room still smelled of Jimmy's baby powder from when he had been staying here, and she did not need the reminder that both her husband and son were gone from her life._

_Gone. One by death, one by choice._

"_He wants a divorce," Pepper whispered in between choking sobs. "He wants a divorce. He WANTS a divorce."_

_One part of her told her that she was better off without the inventor, that a life with him would be nothing more than slow torture and agony. This same part told her that it was his fault that everything went bad in her life, and it demanded that she leave him with nothing more than the clothes he wore on his back once the divorce came to an end. One part of her wanted revenge, destruction, suffering befalling the young genius – the same part that wanted to make Tony Stark feel as empty in his life as she currently felt._

_Then there was the other part – the one that eventually pushed her to be crying nonstop, on the floor, since she had flown away from him. It was the part of her that reminded her that __**she**__ had cornered the blue-eyed boy into offering the divorce as a viable solution. It was the same part that reminded her that she had been the perpetrator of their argument right outside their burning safe house. It was the same part that told her that Tony was as confused and hurt as she was, and that he had made every effort possible to make things right for her – or as much as he could without bringing back the dead. This same part of her told her to stop acting up and stop repeating her mistakes of the past, and to go back to the penthouse to be Tony's wife. To be there for him, with him, for he needed as much support from her as she did from him._

_Both parts argued all day in her mind, and the mere thought of having to choose a side made her exhausted to the point of frustration. This is where she had always ended up after thinking things through as she tried to pick a side to listen to: alone, tired, cold, hungry, confused, in pain and curled up on the floor._

"_Why did this have to happen?" Pepper asked herself as she rolled on the floor to rest on her left side. Her right side was growing numb and she was certain that if she kept at it, she would end up with bed sores without even having to be on a bed. "Why did Jimmy have to die?"_

_Whatever retort her mind was about to come up with, it was interrupted when she heard the sound of the doorbell. At first, she thought her ears were deceiving her, as no one was supposed to know where she was. She held her breath for an instant as she patiently waited for a second ding, and when she finally heard it, she all but groaned aloud. She had not told anyone where she was going – not even her father – so there was only one person that could be at the door right now: Tony Stark._

"_Fucking tracker," she mumbled as she scratched the still-injured skin on her right forearm. "I told him to stop using it! I told him I wanted it out!"_

_Ready to tell off her husband to Kingdom Come, Pepper Potts-Stark stomped her way to the front door. She did not even bother to look through the peephole and just flat-out opened the door, and who she saw standing behind the wooden contraption was someone who she definitely did not expect to show up at her doorstep… or at all._

"_Mrs. Stark?" The old, blonde woman at the door asked, and hearing the use of her married title made the redhead internally flinch. "Is this a good time?"_

_Pepper scrutinized the woman for a second, her dark side dissecting the scene and intentions of her visitor's presence and came to the worst of conclusions of why she was here. She knew she had not called the woman; she had actually not even seen her in months. So the only possible reason why Matilda Jefferies was here right now was because her other half had called her in to offer help._

"_Matilda?" Pepper asked in a suspicious tone as she rubbed some of her tears away with the back of her hands. "What… what are you doing here? Are-are you alone?"_

"_Partially, yes," Matilda nodded and held closer to her chest the metal-looking briefcase she held in her arms. "Mr. Stark… he sent for me. He said you might need my services?"_

_Both of Pepper's hands went to her uneven hair. She ran her fingers through it, only confirming the already known awful state of her red tresses, and after a moment of silence between the two women while Pepper realized she did need a proper haircut, she finally spoke again._

"_Yes," Pepper replied and then looked over Matilda's shoulder to see a familiar vehicle parked at the doorway. "How did you get here?"_

"_Mr. Hogan brought me," Matilda responded as she looked back to wave at Happy, who was just now getting out of one of the reinforced, state-of-the-art Stark vehicles that Tony had designed for the couple. "He won't be coming in, but he was instructed to drop me off and pick me up."_

"_I see," Pepper said, more to herself than anyone else, and then gave Happy a quick nod. The jock returned the gesture and added a small smile of his own before he took out his Stark Pod and began getting ready to pass the time while Pepper got her haircut._

"_So," Matilda began, shifting uncomfortably from one foot to the other. "Is it OK if I come in?"_

"_Yes," Pepper replied almost immediately. "Yes, please, come in."_

_The woman gave Pepper a thankful nod and then walked inside the property as soon as Pepper moved out of the way of the front door, and quicker than the ginger thought possible, Matilda began getting ready to work. She opened the briefcase and, to Pepper's shock, Matilda took out of it all the tools she could possibly need to fix Pepper's hair. In fact, one of the artifacts contained in the middle-sized briefcase was a fully expandable metal chair._

"_Courtesy of Mr. Stark," Matilda said with pride. "He's going to let me keep them, free of charge. This will boost my business!"_

_Pepper gave Matilda a lopsided smile and then sat on the newly assembled chair, trying her best to contain her tears. She wanted to be mad at Tony, she wanted to get a hold of him right now and tell him where he could put his newly-designed hair-salon-in-a-box. But she also knew that this was something she desperately needed and it would have been a pain to go fetch Matilda on her on. The stylist had had Pepper as her client for years – even before Tony Stark had shown up in the ginger's life – and she was aware that Tony knew how much Pepper liked having Matilda as her go-to person for her hair._

_Matilda was a very reserved person, born in Italy and brought to the States when young, many, many years ago. She had eventually married a local barber, and they both ran a successful Mom and Pop business of their own. Pepper had not dared to use an overpriced, exclusive hairstylist when she had become the recipient of the big bucks as a Stark Solutions employee, and she had held on to using Matilda as her only hairstylist. Matilda had even done Pepper's hair and makeup for her wedding, even if that had entailed flying the woman to and from the Bahamas for a few hours._

"_Do you remember what you wanted your hair to look like when you cut it?" Matilda's kind voice disturbed Pepper's thoughts. "Do you have a picture of it?"_

"_No," Pepper gulped. "I don't. I… I trust you can make something out of it."_

"_Of course, Mrs. Stark," Matilda said. "I'll be done in no time."_

_Matilda worked in silence the entire time while Pepper's mind wandered. It seemed surreal to her, being in the Rhodes' former home that she and Tony now owned, sitting in a chair getting an unexpected haircut, only a couple of weeks after her son had died. It seemed surreal as well, that with every lock of hair that Matilda removed from her head, a little of her grief went with it. She knew that as soon as she was alone again, the pain would return, but for now she allowed herself to feel as if the weight of the world was being "trimmed" from her form._

"_Thank you for coming, Matilda," Pepper finally said, and without having to say anything else, the ginger knew that the older woman knew that her thanks had meant so much more than she was willing to say._

Pepper felt a cold breeze hit the back of her neck and she smiled. Her nostrils were filled with the familiar scent of her newly arrived visitor, and before he could announce his arrival, the redhead opened her eyes and spoke up.

"I thought you said you couldn't come today."

"I said I wasn't sure," Gene replied as he rounded the couch and sat to her right, not at all surprised that that the ginger had learned to recognize his presence by now. "Nightly rounds finished earlier than anticipated."

The woman frowned lightly at the realization that when Gene Khan came to visit her every weekend for the past month – just as he had done so since she had left Tony – he did so shortly after the sun came up, which meant that he had spent the night in China watching over his territory, only to then travel to the States to spend time with her.

"You should've taken the weekend off," Pepper whispered, as if she was afraid to bother anyone near her even though they were the only ones in the home. She could not help herself, though, to speak in a low voice when around Gene. It was one of the expectations he had set for her to help her mourn and deal with the pain.

"Mandarin or not, you need to sleep, eat… relax. Just like the rest of us lowly humans do."

Gene smirked, eyes facing the floor, just as hers were. "You'd think a lowly human like you would be honored to have someone like me visit you, but instead you want me to leave."

Pepper snickered. "I didn't say that. Although, I do remember that you _did_ say that you wouldn't use that cologne I got you for Christmas, and yet…"

Her eyes finally faced him and she winked at him when she saw him purse his lips as he realized she had caught him in a lie. Her gaze then shifted to her lap and she sighed deeply before speaking again.

"What are we doing today? Meditating? Reading? Talking?"

"Training," he said without missing a beat. "Today we get to train."

"Really?" Pepper's head snapped to her right. "I thought you said you had nothing more to teach me about that?"

"I don't," Gene replied with a slight shrug. "So now you get to practice what you already know."

"Practice? On you or…?"

"Both." Gene retorted. "The punching bag and me."

"Mmhh," Pepper said.

Her mind wandered to the moment when Gene had ended up becoming her unofficial trainer, by accident, at that. Even if she had left the penthouse to be alone and away from Tony, every day reminded her that she was not alone and that Tony never truly left her. Matilda had showed up to cut her hair, per Tony's request. Happy had brought Matilda over, per Tony's request. Jarvis had ended up visiting her every three days, thanks to Tony disclosing to the butler where the ginger was living now. She had even renovated this home thanks to Tony's funds, which so happened to be hers as well.

And then there was Gene, who had showed up to make sure that Pepper had not used another pair of scissors to hurt herself again, per Tony's pleading. Gene had helped her inject herself with a compound that Tony had created to permanently deactivate and, slowly and safely, dissolve the tracker she had embedded in her right arm – a compound which had been sent over to her via the Mandarin, in fact. Gene had also listened to her while she had ranted about everything she felt and thought, and he had also provided her alternative venues to release her agony and ache.

At first, he had only resorted to listening to her, but that had only worked so much since she was already attending therapy at the request of Edwin Jarvis. After talking no longer sufficed, Gene had then forced her to meditate for a few days out of the week, and had gone as far as using his Makluan abilities to synch with her mind to help her analyze her life in an objective manner. She had relived everything since the Makluan invasion, detail by detail, moment by moment, day by day, until talking about these events did not hurt as much or at all.

Her multiple kidnappings did not hurt anymore. Being adopted did not hurt anymore. Finding out her birth mother was dead did not hurt as much anymore. The fact that Tony had manipulated her memory did not hurt at all anymore – she actually had completely understood the position he had been in; the sacrifice he had made for her. But baby James's death and her separation from Tony, still made her crumble where she stood. She still blamed herself for not being around much when she had attended school. She still blamed Tony for not seeing the signs that there was something wrong with their son.

Somebody had wanted their son dead, even before he had been born, and neither she nor Tony – especially Tony, in his paranoid mind – had taken enough care or time to figure out what was wrong; what was going on behind the scenes – behind their backs. Neither of them had stopped to think that the bounty was still very much alive, and that baby James was the most vulnerable of all of them. Tony had Extremis – sort of, and Pepper had an army of suits at her disposition. Baby James had only had his parents, and if his parents made the wrong decision; took the wrong steps, James Howard Stark was left exposed – _alone_.

Alone: as he had been when he had died. He had been alone, dead for a while, until his cold, little body had been discovered by his _uncle_, James Rhodes.

xxxXXXxxx

_**INTERLUDE**_

_**Nearly two months ago…  
**_

They did not even bother to pay the bill – their only goal was to run out of the restaurant as fast as they could. The owner of the eatery knew who they were, anyway, and there was no doubt that the patrons would send the required payment at a later time. The owner also knew that the couple was a part-time pair of superheroes, and leaving in a hurry at the drop of a hat was something that had become expected of them, even if the couple tried real hard to live a normal life.

The reason for their sudden haste was unbeknownst to everyone that watched them run towards the door and out to their vehicle – redhead included, and no one in the room would have ever imagined that the rush of the founders of Stark Solutions was due to tragic news and not due to an emergency call from the city officials, requesting their help.

"How bad is it? Is he injured?" Pepper asked when they arrived at their vehicle and they both climbed inside, but Tony did not reply. "Tony, _please_ tell me: how bad is it?"

Tony started the car and reeved it up as soon as it was on, nearly crashing it against a car that was exiting a nearby parking spot. Pepper had very little time to put on her seat belt while the vehicle swiveled left and right, a victim of Tony's insane driving, and had this been any other situation, she would have yelled at the inventor to slow the fuck down.

"Hack the lights," Tony uttered in his no-nonsense voice and Pepper immediately took out her pod from her purse to do as she had been told. Her trembling hands could barely do what she could typically do with her eyes closed since the current status of her son's wellbeing was in question.

"Tony, you're scaring me. How bad is he injured? Did someone try to break in? Are Rhodey, David and Roberta alright?"

"I _said_: hack the lights, Pepper."

"I am," she replied before her eyes looked at the road from staring at her pod and she then frowned when she realized they were not heading to the Rhodes' home. "What the…? Where are we –"

"The hospital. You hacked the wrong lights. We're heading to the hospital."

"Hospital?" Pepper asked, voice almost breaking. "Oh… oh, my God."

Her eyes returned to the pod and she worked faster than she would have thought she could, given the circumstances. Any other day, she would have questioned her husband, demand that he explained himself and rationalized his orders and his curt tone of voice to her. But from all the times that Pepper Potts-Stark had done just this in the past, this time she knew it was not worth it disobeying him.

"Turn left on 47th street," Pepper said, also slowly triggering her hero mode. "I've just activated the railroad crossing bars so that we can shortcut on the intersection at Adams and head straight to it."

"OK," Tony said and followed her instructions while Pepper began preparing the Stark-B411 – their current vehicle – to convert to _railroad mode_. Tony had truly gone out of his way to anticipate all the obstacles they could encounter while on the road, and it was at this moment that Pepper regretted making fun of him for saying that they needed a car that could drive on the train tracks.

"Status?" Tony asked, briefly stealing a side glance to his wife.

"T-minus 8 seconds from this last turn."

"Hold on," Tony warned before he rotated the steering wheel, pressed the clutch and shifted gears in preparation for the car's transformation. Pepper held on to the ceiling handle of her side of the car, and remained silent while Tony maneuvered their vehicle to their destination. Just as she had predicted, ten minutes after leaving the restaurant, both she and Tony were exiting the self-parking car to head to the entrance of the emergency room.

The scene they walked in shocked her, as not only was Rhodey, Roberta and David present, but so were Howard, Trish, Virgil, Jarvis, Diane and Happy. Seeing the Rhodes was understandable; Jimmy had been staying at their home for a few days now. Seeing the rest of her family, however, all red-eyed, hugging each other and sniffling, did not make sense to her at all.

"Tony?" Pepper's voice barely reached his ears and her right hand rested on his left arm. "What… what's going on? Where's Jimmy?"

Tony's only response to her was to grab the hand she had placed on him and held it with both of his. She saw him swallow hard again, just as he had done at the restaurant, and his glistening blue orbs finally allowed the tears to freely run down his face. He had not wanted to believe it, he truly had not, but when they both saw the tear-streaked face of Rhodey approach them, head hung in shame, it was only Tony's sudden arms around her that kept the redhead from hitting the floor with her knees.

"No," she said softly at first, but then closed her eyes to scream her words. "NO!"

"Pepper," Rhodey began from where he stood, facing the left side of both of his friends. "I… I'm so sorry… we… we didn't know…"

"NO!" She said again and opened her eyes to glare at her friend. "Shut up, Rhodey! Don't say it! SHUT UP!"

Her eyes then found her husband's and she wrinkled his clothes with her fists. "Tony, please tell me it isn't true. Please… please tell me he's alright."

Oh, how he wanted to tell her what she wanted to hear! How he wanted for it not to be true! He almost lied to her, almost told her that their son was not dead, but the words never made it out of his mouth. He did not need to, anyway. His eyes spoke volumes to her, and when she saw him hang his head and he let out a barely muffled sob, she closed her eyes, screamed and let him hold her weight.

And hour ago, James Howard Stark had been found not breathing, in his crib at the Rhodes' home, due to causes that were still unknown.

_**END OF INTERLUDE**_

xxxXXXxxx

"Pepper?" Gene asked when the redhead did not bother to stop the punch that had almost hit her face just now. "Pepper, are you even paying attention?"

Her eyes took their time focusing on Gene, but once they did make sense of his presence, she was able to immediately throw a complex punch-kick combination to him that she had not been able to do before until now. He had not expected her to react so violently and so accurately after spacing out for no apparent reason, and he was not able to dodge her entire attack: one of the kicks hit him square in the chest.

"Oof!"

Gene Khan rarely lost track of a sparring partner's moves, let alone from an fiercely offensive one, but Pepper's movements had been so deadly accurate and fast – not to mention unanticipated – that had he not been seeing her with his own two eyes, he would have not believed this was the same redhead that had almost gotten herself killed in a crossfire between the Maggia and the Tong.

"Gene!"

Pepper ran towards the fallen Khan and kneeled before him on the floor. She pressed one hand on his chest, where she had hit him, and the other hand on his forehead as she whispered apologies to him. "Gene, are you alright? Gene, I'm so sorry!"

"I'm alright, Pepper," he said between deep breaths. "Just surprised me, that's all."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes," he assured her as he slowly stood up, hand on top of hers on his chest. "Just… got the wind knocked out of me… I'm alright."

He was not aware that Pepper could hit _that_ hard.

Despite his complaints and his insistence that he was not harmed, Pepper helped him up from the ground. When she was positive that he had regained his footing, the redhead let him go and took a step back to provide him some space. She gave Gene and his pride a moment to balance themselves out, and while she waited for him, her eyes landed on her punching bag. They were yet to use it today even though Gene said they would, but if they ended up not using it at all, she would count herself blessed.

She had been shocked when Gene had first brought it with him, as it was the same one she and Tony kept at the penthouse's gym. At first, the redhead had been quite upset that Gene was speaking to Tony about her, especially about what she did while away from him, but in the end she had come to terms with the fact that even if the divorce became final, hers and Tony's lives were too intermingled by now to ever fully become independent from each other. This fact did not prevent her, however, from having printed Tony's face on a piece of paper she had placed on the punching bag – a face that still remained on it, for two weeks now.

Gene had once asked her to picture the object of her discomfort on the bag, one at a time, and let all of her feelings come out of her and onto the training tool. She had started with Loretta, who had left her and her father when she was still a baby. She had then pictured the boy who had told her that she was not pretty enough for him to like her when she was still a child. One by one, just as Gene had instructed her, she had replaced one picture with another: Whitney, Ghost, Rhona, Jules, Whiplash, Mitch, Two-Tone, Justin Hammer and even Nick Fury had made the cut.

One by one, she had poured out her unsolved feelings and anger on them. One by one, she had let go of the unresolved issues she had kept inside for months – some even for years. The technique had worked well so far and it had not taken her longer than just a couple of days to feel comfortable and at ease enough to get someone else's face on the bag. Tony's face, though, she had not been able to remove from the bag.

_Why can't I get over it? Over you, Tony?_

Against her will, tears began forming and her hands clenched into fists, for a moment forgetting that Gene was standing behind her. Her eyes bore into the genius's flat, discolored and tattered ones on the paper. She had hit that bag with everything she had, several times a day for several days now, and yet the mixed feelings that befell her when she saw his image or heard his voice in her dreams were not diminishing at all.

_Why can't you let me go? Just let me go!_

She was not sure if it was because of what the two of them had lived through together, or maybe it was because she still loved him, or perhaps it was the fact that when she saw Tony, she saw James as well, even if their son had not inherited his dark brown, almost black hair, but a combination of hers and his, with just the slightest hint of blonde. Yet in the end, it did not matter why the thought of him made her lose the ground she had gained in the past few weeks in therapy, away from him. In the end, she knew that one look from him was all it took for her resolve to crumble to the ground. One look, one word, one touch from him, and she would take ten steps back in this journey to free herself from him.

How long was she supposed to suffer like this?

"I can't… I can't do this anymore!"

She whimpered loudly and her hands covered her face, and not a second later, Gene was surrounding her with his arms. The moment she felt his warm embrace, she sobbed even louder and Gene simply pressed her against his chest and let her cry, just as he did every time before when she began breaking down like this.

"I just want to be happy," she croaked. "I just… I just want to not be in pain anymore!"

This was not the first time that she had begun crying seemingly out of nowhere. This was not the first time that Gene felt useless to her, either. This was not even the first time that Gene had wanted to leave Pepper here and go kick some sense into Tony Stark, even if deep inside he knew it was both the inventor's _and_ Pepper's fault that they were in this predicament. But this _was_ the first time, however, that Gene Khan acted upon one of the many emotions he felt in moments like these; the one emotion he had kept bottled up for a long while now. The one emotion that Tony Stark had become aware lived in the Mandarin, just last month.

Pepper felt him pull back ever so slightly, enough to see his face but not to enough to not be surrounded by his protective arms. She sniffled and took deep breaths, trying to calm down using the same breathing techniques Gene had taught her for meditation, but she did not get to take the third breath when she felt Gene's lips crash onto hers.

For a nanosecond, the redhead was mentally transported to the time when she was young, still at the Academy and still had a crush on Gene. She was not sure if it was Makluan doing or if it was just her subconscious playing tricks on her, but all she could focus for a moment was on Gene's kiss. It was slow and tender, yet filled with raw emotion she could feel he could barely contain, and for an instant she allowed herself to respond to it, even if just to feel loved by someone who did not feel entitled to play with her head.

When Gene felt Pepper return the kiss, he could no longer restrain himself. He held her face in between his hands, tilted her head back and deepened the kiss, leaving her with very little time to breathe in the air he was robbing her of. And when his hands began to slowly slide down her neck, mapping every pore on her body as they made their way down to her hips, it was then that Pepper realized that this felt comforting and welcoming only because she had experienced it before.

But not with _Gene_.

She abruptly ended the session, as she knew would lead to other things if she did not put a stop to it right now. And the moment her mind completely understood what she had done – what she had almost let happen, she felt her face heat up in a cluster of emotions she did not dare to acknowledge just yet.

"I'm sorry. I shouldn't have," she heard Gene whisper before he dared to kiss her again, this time on her forehead, his hands now back around her neck and face. Their eyes were still shut as neither of them felt brave enough to look at each other after what they had just done, most especially Gene Khan, but he did feel brave enough to tell her the truth, once and for all.

"But I needed to."

"I'm sorry, too," she said with finality, letting him know with those three simple words everything she had meant to say but could not voice at the moment. She knew she did not have to, in the end; Gene could easily read her mind and soul whenever he felt like it. From all the sets of three words that Gene would have wanted to hear or read from her, however, _I'm sorry, too_ was definitely not one of them.

She felt the familiar cold breeze hit her skin again, and she did not have to open her eyes to know that he was gone. She swallowed hard, rubbed her face with her hands and cleared her throat loudly. She remained silent and standing where he had left her, varied and conflicting thoughts and emotions fighting for dominance within her with such intensity that she had to remind herself to breath in and out.

She stood there for a long time until her heart and mind agreed on one thing: the one thing she knew she needed to do next to come full circle in this rollercoaster of torment. Even if it had been wrong, what she had just done with Gene was exactly what she had needed. She had needed company, to feel loved, cherished and desired, and at liberty to let her mind, soul and body roam free. She had needed to shamelessly act upon everything she felt, needed and wanted, all without fearing the consequences of it all. Because there would be no consequences if she did – at least not ones she would ever regret.

When she finally opened her eyes again, her gaze landed on the image of Tony's face on her punching bag. She took small but determined steps toward it, and after exhaling loudly and with purpose, she pulled off the paper from the bag in one swift motion. She immediately crumpled up the paper in her hands and then threw it with all her might into the trashcan nearby on her way out of the gym.

She waked down the hall, into her home office and made a beeline towards her desk. She had just a few days ago finished organizing her office to her liking, and she knew where everything was – where the one thing she was looking for was currently located. Her eyes stared at the large, thick, yellow envelope on her desk; an envelope which held the divorce papers that Roberta Rhodes had begrudgingly, though professionally, drafted for her.

She was yet to find the nerve to send the papers over to Tony even if she had already signed her half of them the same day she had gotten the packet in the mail. She knew that she still had time, she was not even halfway through the deadline the attorney had let her know she had. She could have waited until the last day of the deadline, and as long as Tony was notified of the situation and was given the papers by 11:59 PM, she would have correctly completed her step of the legal separation process.

It was so easy, sending these papers to him – she did not even have to deliver them herself. She could have sent Happy, Jarvis, or even Roberta to deliver said envelope, but it was not until now, until Gene had kissed her so eagerly and passionately, that she had found the courage, drive, motivation and enlightenment she had needed to do the right thing: to do what was right for her. To do the one thing that would make her happy.

Gene's kiss had been eye-opening and she had been reminded of what it was like to feel as if she were the center of someone's universe – the light of someone's day. This is what she had truly needed all along, and even though all the other things she had done so far had helped, it was not until she was physically reminded that she was not alone – that someone desired her to the point of needing her to sleep peacefully at night – that her brain and her soul finally came to terms with the one absolute truth she had been avoiding all along: the solution to her current problems – the beginning of true renewal.

She grabbed the envelope with her left hand while her right palm landed on her chest. She smiled sadly at the scene before her, and when her right hand found the necklace she wore that held both her engagement and wedding rings that she was yet to part ways with, she allowed her left hand to dump the envelope in the trash. She did not need a divorce to be happy. She did not need another man in her life to feel safe. She only needed one person to find joy. She only needed her one and only to heal.

Inadvertently, Gene had shown her – reminded her, that there was only one person with whom she could truly let herself go without embarrassment or guilt. There was already one man in her life that made her feel unique, sought after, coveted and loved. It was the same man that always put her needs before his. The same man that had given her what she thought she wanted even if it meant for him to live a life of misery without her.

It was her friend, her love, her hero, her soul mate: Tony Stark. It was not Gene Khan, Scott Summers or any other man she had once developed a love interest for. It was the man she had married, just a few months ago. The man she still wanted to be married to. The man that also deserved to be happy, just as she was seeking to be. The man that she sometimes thought she did not deserve.

That night, two days short of the two-month anniversary of James Howard Stark's death, Tony Stark received a ray of hope in the form of a text message sent to his pod. It only contained two words; a common phrase at that, but it was the identity of the sender that made it special to him. That evening, Tony had slept more peacefully than he had ever since his son had died, and it had been only because his wife had wished him a good night.

xxxXXXxxx

"Ready to read the first letter?" Pepper's therapist, Loraine Jones, asked the redhead. "It's the first time we've had a breakthrough this significant. We must take advantage of it."

"But I don't want to read the letters," Pepper whined to her former Chemistry teacher, who was now her therapist. "I just told you about them because you asked me to explain what Tony had done to help me. It wasn't an invitation for me to read them to you."

"Pepper," Jones said in a calm yet authoritative voice. "Before you actually meet with Tony, you have to fully comprehend, from his point of view, everything he did to try to support you during your period of mourning. If you don't fully come to terms with what he did and didn't do, and with what you failed to do for him as well, it will be easy for your reconnection attempt to never get off the ground."

Pepper groaned, rolled her eyes, and adjusted her position on the recliner, thinking long and hard about what she was being asked to do. It was a feat in and of itself that the ginger had continued to attend therapy with the woman that had been unintentionally involved in the start of her bad luck streak while in high school, but she had long ago made her peace with it. Both she and Miss Jones had changed, and so had her daughter, Janet Lowe, for that matter, but it was in opportunities like these that Pepper questioned her decision to continue these therapy sessions with the permanently-banned-to-teach-in-the-state-of-New-York woman.

Loraine allowed Pepper another moment of deep thought as she knew how the woman operated. She had learned so much about the redhead's past in the last month and she had even apologized to her for her behavior at the Academy that had placed the ginger in harm's way. Even Janet Lowe had apologized to her as well, and even to Tony too when the inventor had attended his own therapy sessions with the former faculty member of the Tomorrow Academy. And even if the situation she had been involved in with Tony and Pepper had cost the woman her teaching credentials and had pushed her to further her education to find a career in another field, Miss Jones had also come to terms with the fact that she had let the worst in her affect her performance on the job.

"Why don't we make a deal?" Loraine offered when she realized that Pepper would not read the letters that Tony had snuck under her door without getting something in return for it.

"What kind of deal?"

"Why don't _I_ tell you something embarrassing about my life in exchange for _you _reading aloud the letters for me?"

"Really?" Pepper smiled, but the look of doubt did not leave her face. "That sounds tempting. How embarrassing are we talking about?"

"Something so embarrassing that I have never told anyone about it until now. Something about me that only you would know."

Pepper's eyebrows shot up. "Not even Janet?"

"_Especially_ not Janet."

"I see."

Pepper was more than just intrigued by the offer and immediately nodded her agreement to the deal, to Loraine. The woman then took off her glasses, left them on the table near her chair and cleared her throat.

"My last year at the Tomorrow Academy was very difficult for me. I was going through a marriage separation that eventually led to a divorce."

Pepper frowned. "Is this why you became a marriage and grief counselor?"

"Yes."

"Oh," was all that Pepper could provide.

"Anyway," Loraine continued. "A few weeks before the divorce became final, I was having trouble dealing with the fact that I would be a single mom, and all because my husband of twenty years decided that he wanted to date younger women."

Pepper's frown deepened. "I'm so sorry, Loraine. I didn't know."

The therapist gave Pepper a small smile and shook her head. "It's been a few years. It doesn't bother me anymore."

The redhead nodded once to let the older woman know that she would remain quiet for the rest of the story/confession of hers, and Jones continued her end of the deal.

"I felt like I needed to do something for myself. I felt like I needed to do something that would make me happy, even if for just one night, so I went to a bar. Being a teacher, I had to do everything I could to not look like myself, so I used a wig, put tons of make up on, and wore clothes I ended up burning afterwards. That night nothing really came out of it, but I liked the feeling of being someone else; someone who nobody knew I was and could use only when I wanted her to come out. Someone who would do the things I never felt brave enough to do in my own skin."

Pepper looked at her lap for a second, truly understanding what Loraine was telling her. The redhead had played parts she did not typically make herself act out, especially when she had gone undercover to take down the Maggia, and she had done herself some embarrassing things while at it – such as dressing up in provocative attire and making out with an informant behind a vending machine to get information out of him.

"The third night I was at the bar," Loraine continued, "I met a man. He bought me a drink, we started talking, and next thing I know, I'm in bed with him in a hotel."

Pepper could not help to show on her face the shock she currently felt, but she recovered quickly enough to prevent her therapist from seeing said look on her features.

"We started frequenting each other, for a few weeks, actually, but only when I was in my other persona. I didn't have the guts to tell him I wasn't who he thought I was, and as it turns out, neither did he."

"What do you mean?"

Loraine scoffed. "I wasn't the only one who gave a fake name and life details. He did, too. He was not the age he said he was. He was not an attorney, and he was not single at all."

"W-what?" Pepper began. "He-he… he was… _married_?"

Loraine nodded. "Yup. The day I found out about it was the day I was going to tell him the truth about me. I felt so happy when I was with him, and I thought I could make something good out of a bad situation. I thought I'd finally found my second chance at love. So I followed him around, found out where he lived, and before I could get out of the car, I realized he had a family already. Dog and all."

"Oh, my God! How… when… Wow!"

"I know," Loraine agreed. "His real name turned out to be Aldrich Killian or something like that, and he was a researcher at Stark International."

Pepper's mouth hung. "Stark International? I… I don't recall that name…" the redhead said, only now realizing that she had never bothered to go through the database of employees of Howard Stark's company. "I don't think he works for us, though, for Stark Solutions, I mean."

"He doesn't. He left. He moved, I guess. The house I saw him in got sold. I guess he found another desperate woman to screw around with. Either way, the day I found out about him was the day I went off on you during class. I went off on you because I saw you with Tony Stark, and I somehow saw myself in you, dating a man who had lied to everyone about who he really was for years, someone who also happened to have at some point worked and owned the company Aldrich had been employed by."

"So, you sent me to detention because of Tony being both Tony and Iron Man?"

"Essentially. Like I said: not my best moment or decision, at all."

"No kidding," Pepper said with a chuckle before she bent down to her bag and took out the letters Tony had written for her. Loraine was surprised to see the redhead so eager to keep her end of the deal, especially after she had just confirmed that she had gotten in trouble in school through no fault of her own. It spoke volumes to how much Pepper had truly forgiven her therapist for the error of her ways, and it also showed how much the ginger wanted to fix things with Tony Stark.

"Are you ready to hear _my_ sob stories?" Pepper asked as she ordered the letters by date, took a handful of tissues from the box and then evenly split them between herself and Miss Jones.

"Are these letters sad?" Loraine asked as she grabbed the tissues from the redhead. "I thought you hadn't read them at all?"

"I haven't," Pepper replied. "But when it comes to Tony telling me how he feels about me, he has a way of making me cry."

"Oh, jeez!" Loraine said. "As if the therapy sessions with him weren't already hard enough on me!"

Pepper simply nodded and smiled.

xxxXXXxxx

_Nope, not this Valentine's either_, Tony thought with sadness as he crossed out from the calendar the last five days that had already passed of the month. February was almost over and with it came the realization that he had not been able to have a normal, romantic Valentine's Day celebration with Pepper since they had met back in high school. Every year, something had gotten in the way, and last year it had been two things: crows attacking their apartment home, and the shock at finding out that Pepper had been considering giving up her child for adoption to keep him from suffering for the rest of his life for being the son of Pepper Potts.

And the son of Tony Stark, for that matter, but neither of them had known that at the time.

The closest he had gotten to celebrate a romantic evening with his wife this year, had been the text message she had sent to him that very same night. He was not sure if she had done so out of nostalgia or a feeling of obligation, but when the text messages kept coming in the morning and at a night, his faith in humanity was beginning to be restored. He had been so certain that Pepper was having the time of her life while away from him, or so he had gathered from Roberta, Gene and Jarvis, but now that he thought about it more, they had never said that Pepper seemed happy. All they had said was that Pepper kept herself busy doing things she had never had the chance to do before.

And as a result, so had he.

At first, he had drowned himself every day since she had left in liquor and cigarettes. But when Gene had pointed out to him that if he let himself go and did not take care of his own body, he would truly never have the chance to protect Pepper from harm if it came to it, Tony had stopped the self-pity party he had sponsored for himself for weeks on end. The message had really hit home, though, when Gene had taken the punching bag with him to give to Pepper, and since then and for the past two weeks, Tony had begun working out again.

He had stopped drinking and smoking, and he had even cleaned up the entire penthouse, all by himself. All the Christmas decorations were finally put away, and all the presents had been stored in a box in James's old room. He had briefly thought of getting rid of the items altogether, but he quickly realized that that was not his call. It was both his and Pepper's decision to make. He had also cleaned and dusted the nursery but he was yet to have it dismantled, simply because he knew that it was something that both he and Pepper needed to do together. It was something that needed to be done at the same time by the both of them so that hard feelings were not harbored inside.

Or so his therapist, Loraine Jones, had so many times said to him. And perhaps once the shock from the irony that the woman who had once made his blood boil was now helping him and Pepper reconnect finally wore off, he would maybe even take the time to properly thank the woman for what she had done for them throughout these past few weeks, one day at a time.

_Not __**that **__grateful with her, just yet._

He put away the calendar and stood up from the weight bench with the intention of taking a hot shower. He had been working out all morning until his muscles had finally screamed at him to stop, and as opposed to months ago, he had listened to his now fully-human body. It was during the workouts that he missed Extremis the most and the power and stamina it had once given him, but not until he figured out a way to counteract the negative side of the virus was he to even consider turning it back on again.

A few days after Pepper had left him, he had almost activated it again, feeling that he had nothing to lose now that both his son and his wife were out of the picture, but thanks to a talk from Virgil Potts, from all people, Tony had stopped himself from essentially putting a deadline to his own existence. He was grateful to his father-in-law to have knocked some sense into him, and he was grateful for everyone that had helped them both during this troubling time, for that matter, but he also knew that he could not claim victory just yet. He still had to see Pepper in person again. He still needed to be in the same room with her.

He still had to speak with her directly and not just through short, random text messages via their pods. He still had to look her in the eye, hold her in his arms, and tell her face-to-face that he wanted to work things out, that he never truly wanted a divorce, and that they would too overcome this latest horrible slap life had given them. The final test would come when he and Pepper met at Loraine's office tomorrow to be in the presence of the other for the first time since she had left – when they had to be open about how they felt and what they were willing to do to start returning to their normal lives.

Tony stretched his muscles to help with the proper cooling of them and began walking to the living room on his way to the bedroom, but then decided to stop at the kitchen for a quick snack. He still had to meet with the SI board tonight, and while he was not looking forward to dealing with the passive-aggressive comments of Mitch regarding his current separation from Pepper, he also felt renewed with the sense of getting back into a familiar routine.

This had been the plan, anyway, for him to take over the operations and leadership of Stark Solutions after Pepper finished college so that she could spend more time with James. There had been a major setback to those plans, this much was true, and while nothing would ever change the fact that his son was gone and that no one would ever replace the little boy who had brought them both so much joy, Tony knew that he needed to make his peace with the situation and move on.

_It wasn't anyone's fault, really_, Tony thought as he took out a bottle of cold water from the fridge. _Even if Howie had been home with us, he would have been asleep in his room, too. We wouldn't have known he was dead, either, just as Rhodey and Roberta didn't know._

He finished drinking the entire contents of the bottle, and just as he was about to dump the empty plastic container in the trash, he heard a sound that made him stop in his tracks. It was the sound of the front door opening. It was the sound of the override master code being used – a code only he and one other person knew about; the one person that was currently now inside the home, red-eyed, disheveled, sporting a new albeit rather sexy haircut, looking angry and staring deeply at him.

"Pepper?"

"You knew," she snarled at him. "You _knew_ and you didn't tell me!"

Tony was taken aback. From all the ways they could have met again, from all the scenarios that he had listed in his mind, this was the least wanted scenario for the genius. "Pepper, I… I don't know what you mean."

"Fuck you, Stark!" She said as she stomped to where he stood, paralyzed by her words and sudden appearance. "You said it was nobody's fault! You said that the cause of Jimmy's death was unknown!"

"It was! It is! What… I don't understand… why are you mad at me? I thought… I thought we were going to work things through?"

"NEVER!" She said and angrily punched him on his chest once. "I'll NEVER, EVER forgive you for lying to me. It was you! It was you all along! YOU KILLED OUR SON!"

"What? How…" Tony shook his head. "Pepper, please breathe and explain it to me. I didn't kill him. I didn't kill our son. I thought you understood that already."

"I did," she said and wiped tears from her face. "Or at least I thought I did… until… until I found _this_."

The "this" that the redhead was referring to was unceremoniously jammed into his chest by her. Tony stared at her one more second before his eyes traveled down to the folder she had shoved onto him. He grabbed the folder, took a step back, finally threw away the bottle and then placed the folder on the kitchen island – the same place where he and Pepper had shared many enjoyable, late and early morning conversations while drinking coffee.

This did not seem to be one of them.

Pepper walked over to the living room and took a tissue she instantly used to clean her face. She had just parked in their executive garage moments ago before she had stormed inside her former home. She was not sure how she was still standing up, how she had not murdered Tony Stark herself as soon as she had walked in, but she was somehow managing to keep herself together as much as she could. Perhaps the therapy sessions had helped her manage her anger. Perhaps this time she would not burn down a building to calm her madness.

Tony opened up the folder and began reading the papers that were held inside. At first, he was not certain that he understood why the death certificate and medical records of James had made the ginger so upset. He had seen these documents before when he had signed them, and even though he had not actually read them, he knew that all he had needed to know at the time was that his son was deceased.

He eyed the documents a few times, trying his best to find the piece of information that had set off his wife, but when he failed to see anything of importance other than the time and date of death of James, he swallowed hard and nervously looked back at her.

"You don't see it, do you? Or are you trying to pretend that you didn't already know?" Pepper spat and walked back to him. "You _can't_ deny it anymore, Tony. _You_ are the reason why our son is dead!"

"I don't get it, Pepper," Tony replied and again quickly sorted through the papers, desperately trying to see what was out of place. "I don't see what you see here!"

"You mean you don't _want_ to see it _again_. You've already seen it before. You just chose to let me out of knowing the truth."

"What truth, Pepper? Just tell me what you're talking about!"

Pepper's tears returned to her, but instead of wiping them away, she let them flow down her face so that Tony knew that she was beyond keeping at bay what she felt. She then sorted through the papers herself until she found the one she had hacked from the S.H.I.E.L.D. database just hours ago while she had been trying to bring closure for herself regarding the death of her son by reviewing the forensic data S.H.I.E.L.D. had ran on their son. Digital forensics was her area of specialty, and majoring in said subject had allowed her to do what she had done: uncover the real cause of her son's death.

She singled out said paper, pointed to Tony's signature on it, and then read the final disclosure aloud. "The cause of death of James Howard Stark, age 8 months, was due to a genetic disease inherited from his father: Anthony Edward Stark. James Howard Stark died of complications of Extremis, and while Anthony Edward Stark is the carrier of said virus and passed it on to his son, he will not be charged with involuntary manslaughter due to the nature of the virus at the time of conception."

The redhead took a deep breath to continue reading but not before she spared the stunned inventor a glance. "With my signature," she sniffled, "I agree that I have read and understood the information provided in this document, and that I will thus not seek legal recourse to regain my right to procreate. I, Anthony Edward Stark, solemnly agree to never conceive another child, and shall I fail to do so, I will be immediately placed under arrest and charged with the crime of child abuse, manslaughter and failure to comply with a legal binding contract with the World Security Council, given to me on their behalf by S.H.I.E.L.D. on this, the 20th of December of the year in course. Signed: Tony Stark."

Tony's gaze went from Pepper's face to her finger on the paper, back and forth several times. He was reading the information, he was hearing it from her, and while his signature on the document denoted that he should had been aware of these facts a long time ago, he could not recall for the life of him when, how and why S.H.I.E.L.D. had even gotten involved in his son's death. He did not remember signing the document. He did not even remember reading it all or being in the presence of Nick Fury. Then again, he did not remember much of those days following his son's death, so it was highly possible that he had agreed to this or other, worse things while his mind had been trying to block the outside world to deal with the loss of his child.

"This is what happens when you lie," Pepper said and then slammed a yellow envelope on the kitchen island. "This is what happens when you lie and keep secrets from the ones you love, Tony. If… if you had told me about Extremis sooner… if we had monitored Jimmy because of it…"

"He'd still be alive," Tony finished for her and swallowed hard.

"Yes," Pepper agreed. "He'd still be alive. And you and I… we-we would have still had a chance… to be together. A chance to work things out."

"But we don't," he said as he stared directly into her eyes. "We don't anymore."

"No," she shook her head and held back a sob. "We don't."

Tony watched her as she took off a necklace from herself and then laid it on top of the envelope she had just handed him. It only took two seconds for Tony to realize what the necklace held, and one more second for him to understand what the large envelope contained. And it took him only half of one second to realize that Pepper had just left him again, and that his appointment for tomorrow with her in Loraine's office was never going to take place.

* * *

**A/N:** This is the last chapter that ends with Tony/Pepper angst, I promise. I said it would only be for a couple of chapters and this is the second. Chapter 3 will have some angst but it will get resolved, and from then on, our favorite couple will start seeing things as they really are.

Please don't forget to review. Every review saves a dust bunny in need! A link to Pepper's new haircut (just imagine it to be red, please) can be found on my profile :) Can't wait to hear from you!


	4. Chapter 3

**Guest Review Responses**

**apps: I am not stalking you,but this proves that how connected this reader is with your stories...you won't believe every day and every now and then I keep a regular check on your updates...seriously dying to see pepperony...plz don't take this much time. – **Boo! And here I was hoping I had a stalker :P We will have some major Pepperony after this chapter, and there is some here, too.

**Someone: NOOOOOOOO! Just as I thought they were gonna cancel the divorce...:'( WHY?! I'm literally on the edge of my seat, you can't just leave me like this! (oh and you updated fast! Yay! :D) I can't wait for the next chapter AND THE PEPPERONY! – **Here it is! This chapter is the boo-boo fixer of all time!

**Guest: The death of james... it came from 24 Hours didn't it? first chapter ****anyway please keep it stories are ... well they make your day by trying to make you cry. – **You know, I'd actually forgotten that I'd killed another James in _24 Hours_. I think I was high when I wrote that story XD. I don't remember half of it. In fact, I'm probably high half of the time I'm writing these crazy stories. I need to lay off the allergy medicine and candy.

**Muah: Wow... The last part was really unexpected! But it makes it so much more exciting! I don't know how you're going to fix this thought... – **I don't want to spoil it much, but we will be fixing this – partially – in the last part of this story. Welcome back!

**apps: Hiii...I am expecting you to update today! – **And I wanted to! But I had to grade papers… and I have another stack here right now, staring at me. I'm giving my back to it for now XD

**Toni: That prologue...yeah, I don't know what to say to that :( ****Very tough reading these chapters. I can't imagine how hard they must have been for you to write but I'm thankful that you are continuing to finish these chronicles. I still believe the baby's alive. And when there is hope... :) – **Welcome back, Toni! They_**are**_hard to write. I even get mad at myself. But I know it will be all good in the end, so I just hold on. I will fix it. I promise. I promise. I promise!

**Guest: ME TOO! Well...I HOPE SO! :D – **Here's the next chappie! Don't forget to tell me what you think, please!

* * *

**Chapter 3: March**

_ It broke her heart to leave him, leave her father – everyone she knew – like this. But she knew she had to do something about her suspicions, even if they were mostly unfounded at this point. She knew taking on this responsibility alone could be dangerous for her, but she also knew that there was the small chance that she was overreacting. No one ever accused her of having nothing more than rational thoughts, anyway, so if she ended up being wrong, there would not be any harm done to anyone. All the harm that could have been caused by her actions was already done._

_ Or so she had thought._

_ Wishing she could have seen Tony in person one more time, the redhead marched down the hall of the Makluan Temple one last time to leave behind her Plan B, cautiously hidden behind one of the loose bricks of the old building. She knew that Tony would eventually find it, and with it he would find the truth about her plans. She was certain that Tony would immediately figure out what had happened to her and would instantly back her up. She expected that he would not leave her to fend for herself against the imposter that her adoptive mother was – he was a genius, after all. And as a genius, he would definitely decipher the code she had left behind._

_ Only much later, weeks after she had left that temple, would she realize that she was wrong._

xxxXXXxxx

The second-in-command of S.H.I.E.L.D. practically dragged her feet to her General's quarters. The news she brought with her was weighing her down, and her already petite form seemed to shrink even further. She hated being the bearer of bad news, but at this point bad news was all that was delivered on the blasted ship: Tony's treatment had not worked the way she had expected it to be; General Fury still trusted Maya Hansen's advice on anything related to the Stark family; S.H.I.E.L.D. was out of weapons and had not been able to find anyone to replace their former manufacturers; the World Security Council was breathing down their necks about the questionable decisions that Fury was taking, and she had not had a good night's sleep since she had been assigned to infiltrate the hospital where James Howard Stark had been taken, and only to sneak in a very unfortunate and dubious form that Tony Stark had signed without knowing.

Maria Hill never thought she would ever hate her job.

But here she was, carrying the weight of the world on her shoulders, and she wanted nothing more than to come clean with Tony Stark, with Pepper Potts – with everyone. Yet, her caring heart, which she hardly ever relied upon for doing her job, prevented her from doing it, from telling everyone what she knew. Her heart told her to just let Tony and Pepper enjoy the last days of their lives.

At first, her loyalty and admiration for her General had been sufficient for carrying out the less-than-honorable deeds she had been tasked with. When her blind belief in General Fury's sanity ended, she had begun relying on her loyalty to S.H.I.E.L.D.'s mission to continue carrying out whatever complex set of instructions Maya Hansen had left behind for S.H.I.E.L.D. to complete. And when this loyalty had run out and James H. Stark had been reported dead, she had lost all hope that the redhead and the inventor would ever make it out of this bounty alive. Phase three had ended last year. Phase four was already in place. And at this rate, it was more merciful to just let the two heroes be unaware of what was to come.

Everyone, herself included, was responsible for James's death – and so would they all be for Pepper Potts's and Tony Stark's demise.

_I should've gone to beauty school._

She knocked on the door twice and when the door opened just a half a second later, Maria let herself in. Fury was resting his back against the ridiculously large chair, and even though his shoulders were squared and his pose was rigid, Maria could see in his eye that he was as beaten up as she was. He inhaled deeply when she took a moment too long to state her business and before he gave her another annoyed look, the woman finally spoke up.

"There has been a leak, General. Our database has been compromised."

Fury closed his eye, wishing he could just make his problems go away. "When and who?"

"We're not sure when, yet. We just found that it happened. And I think you know who it was."

Nick sighed, eye still closed, and his fingers flew to his forehead to rub the vein that threatened to pop open at any second now. "How did she manage that? Our system was designed by the brightest minds in software encryption."

Maria pursed her lips so that the bulk of the arrogant tone that would come out with her answer remained mostly inside.

"Sir, do I really have to answer the question of how the top graduate of Empire State University's Master's program in Cybersecurity and Digital Forensic Science, who also happens to be Tony Stark's wife, was able to hack into our secure servers without our knowledge?"

Fury exhaled again and finally opened his eye. "No," he shook his head. "I guess not. What's the damage?"

"You will know when we know, sir."

Fury scoffed. "Or we will know when the world knows."

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

xxxXXXxxx

_ Seeing her father drive away from the drop-off section of the airport made her situation that much realer. She thought she had a solid action course, a way out if she needed to flee, but the moment her father's eyes became nothing more than a moving target until only their memory remained, she almost did not walk inside the airport. This was not like the other times she had gone undercover or had pretended to do, say or be someone she was not for the sake of distraction. This time, there was no Tony, Gene or even Rhodey or Happy to back her up. This time, it was just her against the world._

_ She would have time to reflect later, she knew, but for now all she had time for was to hope that Tony had read her message by now. Rhodey had not wanted to deliver the letter in the first place, but she knew that he would anyway. It was imperative that Tony saw that message before too long, and even if he saw it by the time she was already in California, she knew that the inventor would be with her in a heartbeat. All he had to do was to see __**Private Eye**__, and then find the USB drive she had hidden in his second home in order to know what to do._

_ There would be time to thoroughly discuss her real feelings with him, to tell him in person how she really felt about him, but for now all she could do was wait in line to complete the mandatory airport security inspection that appeared would take a big chunk of her available time._

xxxXXXxxx

"Ms. Jones will see you now, Mr. Stark."

It still made Tony uncomfortable to be greeted by his therapist's assistant and daughter, Janet Lowe, although not as much as it still perturbed him that he was attending counseling with a woman who had once made his life miserable. He still had his doubts that the girl who had once trashed Pepper's locker and had stolen a kiss from him really cared if her mother was helping him cope with the loss of his son and his impending divorce, and yet here he was.

Then again, he was here only because he had nowhere better to be, and only because Rhodey had nagged at him to at least finish the sessions for the sake of his mental health and state of mind. The almost-agent of S.H.I.E.L.D. was in town for Spring Break vacation, and even though he would be returning home for good in just a couple of months, the time between today and Rhodey's permanent homecoming felt like an eternity for the inventor. With his son dead, Pepper gone and his inability to keep a conversation with anyone, Rhodey was the only person that was keeping the genius from being declared clinically insane. And knowing how insane Tony could be, this was quite the feat.

"Good morning, Tony. Come on in."

Tony nodded to Loraine and the woman returned the gesture with a small smile. The blue-eyed boy knew what was expected of him during these sessions, so he made a beeline for the large couch and laid on it. He closed his eyes, exhaled deeply, placed his laced hands on his chest and spoke the first line he always started his conversations with when in therapy.

"I miss her."

"She doesn't miss you."

The deadpanned response he received from Loraine made his eyes snap open, his head turn to face her and his mouth hang. From all the responses he had expected from her and from all the questions she always asked, a hurtful statement such as the one she had just uttered was the last one he would have thought he would ever hear from her.

"What?"

"She doesn't," Loraine continued despite the hurt look of the genius. "She's done with you and she's tired of having you in her life. She's carried the burden of knowing you for nearly seven years and she's had nothing but pain to show for it. She wants the pain to stop and she will do anything she needs to make herself happy. Including but not limited to moving on without you in her life."

"But…"

"No, Tony," Loraine shook her head. She had promised herself that she would quicken the pace of these sessions, and by damn she would do so today! She needed to make Tony and Pepper see the time that was being wasted; the energy that was expelled over nothing. It was ironic to the therapist how alike the two of them were when in here, and even if she had not been able to convince Pepper to meet with Tony at all to vent her fears and feelings to him regarding his apparent involvement in baby James's death, this was not going to stop the therapist from making them both realize the mistake divorcing each other truly was. _The ends justifies the mean_s was a phrase that never before held so much truth for Loraine Jones in her entire life.

"There are no buts."

Tony stared at the woman for another second before he slowly pressed his back against the couch once more and closed his mouth. He fixated on the ceiling tiles and briefly remembered the time he had dared the ginger to stay home with him to relax and count the tiles on their own ceiling. It had been one of the many mornings she had woken him up, threatening to use a pitcher of cold water on him while still in bed. Back then, she had not known what they had been in the past, and all she knew was that they had already been friends. Back then, she had been happy, for the first time in months, and it was due to the fact that she was not his girl, but just his best friend and partner in the fight against crime.

That day they had danced and laughed in the kitchen, living the moment as if the two of them were the only people in the world. She had pressed herself against him and he had smiled like a fool in love. They had then eaten the breakfast she had made for them and their conversation at the table had revealed a truth he had lived by for years to come.

_ "Hn," he mused as he evenly split the pancakes between them. "True, but all I gotta do is take you out dancing and you'll forgive me for being late."_

_ "Hey!" Pepper narrowed her eyes at him. "No fair! You know I can't refuse a good dance!"_

_ "Ha-HA!" He pointed his fork at her. "I know your weakness, Potts! And that, my beloved, is why you will never be able to stay mad at me forever. I'm your dancing partner for life."_

"Dancing partner," Tony said aloud after a moment of quietness, and Loraine furrowed her brows, not quite following where the sudden response was coming from.

"What?"

"Dancing partner," Tony repeated, this time surer of himself. "I'm her dancing partner. For life."

It took Loraine half a second more before she finally placed where she had heard those exact same words before, and when she remembered that Pepper had made a similar statement about Tony at some point during the better part of the therapies, Loraine smiled.

"Then be her partner," Loraine said, glad that he was starting to see what he needed to do for now. "Let her be your partner, too. Just don't force her to still be your wife."

xxxXXXxxx

_She knew that this was neither the time nor place to be emotional, but the moment she had dug her hand inside her shoulder bag to retrieve the details of her flight and she had instead grabbed – with her burnt hand, at that – the backstage pass for the Annual Summer Science, Research and Development Symposium by Reed Richards that she carried in her bag, she had immediately broken down – in the middle of the seating area of the gate. She knew how much Tony admired the man, and even if she had spent months of her allowance to buy the darned ticket, it was very probable that he would not get to use the pass at all. Especially if she did not get to talk things out with him._

_ She was aware that her head should have been in the game – in the mission she had given herself – but she could not help but regret how things had ended between Tony and her. She had been rash and stupid and had said things she had not meant. She had practically shoved Tony's feelings for her back at him, and even a kick in the nuts would have been a more honorable thing to do to him than to belittle whatever emotion he felt for her. Whether it was – or had been – a crush, deep friendship or even the beginning of love, she knew that she had done wrong by him. He deserved to at least be heard and be apologized to, even if just for the sake of respecting the friendship they had._

_ Or once had; she was not sure._

_ She felt the tears run down her cheeks, and when it became difficult to breathe, she realized that she had run to the ladies room to freshen up. Her mother was yet to show her face at the airport, so she knew she had a few minutes to wash her face and clean away the evidence that she had begun to cry. Pepper grabbed all of her belongings, stood up from her seat and walked in the direction of the restrooms, all the while she tried her best to dry some of her tears with the back of her hand._

xxxXXXxxx

Rhodey did not feel proud of what he had just done to his friend, but one thing he had learned in the Air Force Academy was that the end truthfully justified the means. And right now, the end goal was for Pepper to relax and take a break from feeling all the emotions that kept overwhelming her as a result of not sleeping for nearly two days straight. And the only way he had been able to help the redhead get some much needed rest was to drug her coffee with barbiturate drugs.

The things he did for his best friends.

"I'm sorry, Pepper," Rhodey whispered to the slumbering girl that now lay on the couch in the living room of his former home, while he covered her with a blanket. "It's for your own good."

For good measure, James Rhodes leaned down and kissed the ginger's forehead, which only made him feel guiltier when she mumbled Tony's name in her sleep. He had to repeat to himself that what he was doing – the extreme measures he was taking with the couple – was only to help his two friends find their way back together again. He was not trying to inflict more pain or go against their wishes and beliefs; he was honestly trying to patch things between them – just as everyone else that knew and cared for them, was trying every single day to do since the baby had died.

He had questioned, many times in the past, his involvement in their love affairs. He had promised himself only to intervene to some extent so that their relationship developed naturally, strongly, in order for the couple to be able to dig themselves out of trouble. And by damn he tried his best! Rhodey still vividly remembered the first time he considered meddling in their issues more than what was expected of him, and to this day he was glad that he had taken a step back and had let the matter unfold on its own.

_Pepper let go of his hands and rubbed her face with her own. "Tony… it's so weird between us now. I… I know it's kinda my fault because I wanted to tell him even though he wouldn't let me, but then he kissed me, and we hugged, and then he was mad that I was still dating Happy. But he told me he wanted to say it first, so I was going to let him, but then the phone rang, and it was Happy, and I swear I wasn't going to answer, but he thought I was, so he –"_

_ "PEPPER! You're doing it again! Slow __**down**__."_

_ "OK. Uhm, Rhodey. Does Tony not want to be my friend now?"_

_ "What makes you think that?"_

_ "He… I don't know. I just, I don't want to lose his friendship," she began. "It's already bad enough we're all going to go our separate ways in less than a month, but I was hoping we could all spend the summer together before I never heard from you guys until who-knows-when. Even if he and I didn't… even if he didn't feel the same way, in the end."_

_ Rhodey listened to his friend, toying with the idea of telling her that Tony did feel the same way, but that he was just born without the socially-adaptable DNA strand. However, he knew that as much as he wanted to just lock up both of the teens in a closet and throw away the key, there was only so much meddling he could do for them. If they did not figure this out on their own, their relationship would never truly take off, and then they ran the risk of splitting up before anything good actually grew between them._

_ "Besides," she added after a short pause. "I could never be like Whitney."_

_ "I know it's going to sound repetitive, but you just have to talk to him. And maybe turn off your cell phone when you do."_

And he_ had_ let them figure things out in their own, and all things considered, they had done a pretty good job so far. Even after the multiple kidnappings and misunderstandings, the memory issues, the lies, the secrets, the dangerous missions and the overall difficult life they were destined to live just because of who and what they were, Tony and Pepper had beat the odds and had stayed together despite whatever life had thrown at them. Rhodey himself was not certain if he would have stayed with the one person that made his life difficult, even if that person was also the one soul he wanted to spend the rest of his life with.

"_Date night, huh?" Rhodey began, eyes lost to the front. "I take it that married life suits you?"_

"_As perfectly as the Iron Man armor once did," he replied, took a sip of his drink and then added with a smile and a wiggle of his eyebrows. "It adjusts, too."_

_Rhodey chuckled and shook his head, thinking of a million dirty thoughts that fit the description Tony had just placed in his mind. Even if he had always somehow known that his friend and the redhead would end up dating at some point in their lives, he had not foreseen this level of commitment that the two had for one another._

"_You guys happy, then?"_

"_Yes," Tony responded without missing a beat. "I love her so much, Rhodey. She and my son are the best things that have ever happened to me. I'm so fucking lucky that I sometimes think that I just have to be dreaming it all."_

_Rhodes spared his friend a glance and for a second envied how at-peace and relaxed the billionaire seemed. From all the years that he had known Tony, he had seen him like this only a handful of times and mostly only after he had come up with another great invention for Stark International before the plane crash that had changed his life. However, this was the first time that not only did his appearance indicate how content he was; his words and his tone of voice denoted it as well._

_The inventor sat with his right leg bent towards his chest and his left leg stretched out on the ground. His right arm rested on his bent leg and his right hand lazily held the beer bottle. His left arm supported some of his weight by placing his palm on the floor and his face practically radiated happiness with his bright smile and his almost glinting eyes._

Tony had stayed with Pepper and Pepper with Tony, no matter what, and for that Rhodey could not help but to admire the courage his two friends had had even with the adversities they had faced so far. But the loss of a child was not any of the things they had encountered before, and this was the reason why Rhodey was meddling more than he really should have. This was the reason why he now found himself reading letters that he should have never found in the first place.

Even though the dates on the letters were recent, the wrinkled and damp state of the papers indicated to Rhodey that the letters had seen better and _dryer_ days. He had not meant to sneak around and he had not meant to read them, but Pepper was passed out all over them, and when he had tried just now to make her feel more comfortable by removing the papers and books she had fallen asleep on, the familiar penmanship had caught his eye.

It was Tony Stark's writing alright, who despite his life being technologically-inclined, had very neat and legible handwriting for his age and otherwise cluttered lifestyle. Rhodey figured it was probably due to the fact that he sketched designs for a living, and in order for his creations to come to life, he needed to be very precise and exact in his drawings and annotations on the diagrams he used for his prototypes. Although, now that he thought about it further, Tony had no need for his sketches to be as perfect as they tended to be, as only he, his father and maybe even Pepper were the only ones nearby who were able to understand what was written on them, anyway.

Rhodey tried looking away; he really tried. But his curiosity was greater than his current self-control, and without minding the fact that he was essentially violating Pepper's privacy and trust and both of his friends' intimacy, he began reading the first letter he had in hand.

_Pepper,_

_I can hear you crying, you know? I can hear you're in pain. I'm in pain, too. I miss him, too. But I miss you, too. I want to help you, Pepper. I want you to use me for whatever you need. I want you to get better. I want us to miss him together. We need each other, more than we ever did. Please, let me in. Please, answer your phone. I'm waiting for you. Please, let me help you._

_Love,_

_T.S._

Rhodey furrowed his brow as he slowly scanned the letter one more time before he folded it and placed it inside the album that Pepper had been staring at when he had walked inside the home. The album contained several pictures, mostly of the redhead and the inventor, and it was then that Rhodey realized how much he had missed his friends – how much he had missed out on with them.

Even if he had had the chance to visit them often throughout his years at the Air Force Academy, he had not seen them with the same frequency he had been used to when still in school. Before his eyes and as steady and slowly as a dripping faucet, the clueless genius and the chatty ginger had made a life together; a life that Rhodey could only hope to one day have of his own. The life he wished his friends would someday enjoy.

Knowing that he should stop but being unable to do so, Rhodey picked up the next letter and read it to himself.

_Pepper,_

_Remember that day when I took you to the beach last December? Remember how cold it was? I was freezing, Pep, but I still went with you because I knew that would make you happy. What would make you happy now? What can I do to make it better? Please tell me how to make it better. I know I can't bring him back, but I need and WANT you back. Please, talk to me. I'm here for you. I miss you._

_Love you,_

_T.S._

Rhodey's eyes scanned the other letters, all containing similar messages of encouragement and hope, and sometimes of utter desperation on Tony's part. Sheet by sheet, Tony implored the ginger to open the door to their room, to let him inside to share the pain, and Rhodey figured by the fact that Pepper now lived by herself and that she had left the penthouse shortly after the baby had died, that it meant that Tony's efforts had been fruitless; as much as his own task of helping his friends was proving to be.

As different as Tony and Pepper were, they were also eerily similar in some ways: their stubbornness being one of them. Pepper insisted that she would never forgive Tony for lying to her – although Rhodey was not sure what this particular and recent lie had been about – and Tony was adamant that the best way to help Pepper was to let her live her life without him and move on with his life. Or as much as he could while he still clung to the memory of what they had once been.

Maybe he should have never read the letters in the first place. Maybe meddling this much was not the best option for helping them. Maybe he had just walked in to the ultimate argument that would finally break these two apart.

What if they truly could not stand being together ever again? What if the damage done was beyond repair? What lie had Tony told the ginger that had made her state that she wished she had never met the inventor in the first place? What type of fib had Tony concocted this time around that would warrant the inevitable demand and only solution of divorce?

What the _fuck_ had happened between them that had severed the connection the two had once had? Was it really just James's death? Or was there something more than neither party dared to speak about? Was there something else that neither of them wanted to tell Rhodey about?

Knowing that the answers would not come easy or at all, Rhodey sighed deeply as he finished tidying up the living room. Pepper would be conked out for hours, perhaps throughout the entire day, and he certainly did not want to be there when she woke up and she realized what he had done to her. She had been beyond reason when he had slipped the drugs in her drink, and he doubted that the long rest would give her some perspective in the matter at all. So, for the sake of self-preservation, Rhodey knew that the best and only thing he could do for now was to leave the premises before Pepper woke up.

But before he had been able to leave the home, before he had been able to leave Pepper to rest for the day, his eyes had caught a glimpse of one more document – one document that he somehow instantly knew held the answers to the questions he had. It was not the fact that the document was on top of Pepper's copies of the divorce papers that made it appealing. It was not the fact that the paper was different from the letters he had just placed next to it on the side table. It was the fact that his future employer's insignia was all over it that had made Rhodey pick it up.

And when the man's eyes finished reading the entire document, when his brain made sense of the information in it, James Rhodes was as mad and as displeased with the inventor as the ginger had shown to be. But above all, he became determined to use his impending status as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent to find out what really had transpired the night that James Howard Stark had died.

xxxXXXxxx

_Pepper rubbed her face with her cold hands and even though she was inhaling so deeply that her lungs and chest burned with the exertion, the tears would not stop. This was the third time she washed her face with freezing water, but it was as if the more of the liquid she rubbed on her face, the more the tears were encouraged to come back. Why was she so emotional about this?_

_ She had a million and a half theories about it, but she pushed them all away when she remembered that she had to return to the gate. The plane would start boarding soon, and as shitty as her luck had been, she was certain she was going to return to the seating area only to find her mother was already there, pissed off beyond belief at the fact that she had not been there when she arrived, even if the older woman was the one who was yet to report to their meeting location._

_ Pepper rubbed her face one last time before she grabbed a handful of paper towels and patted her face dry. Her eyes then caught a glimpse of a woman standing behind her, and thinking that said lady was waiting on Pepper to move out of the two-person sink before her, the ginger stepped aside to allow the brunette to wash her hands. The woman never reached for the sink, however, and instead inserted a needle in Pepper's neck, too suddenly for the redhead to have any chance to react._

xxxXXXxxx

He honestly_ had _tried to make this as swift, painless and unceremonious as possible, but in the end he had been destined to fail at this task – and failed miserably, he had. It had not been the baby blue walls, the unused plastic sippy cups or bins, or the pulling apart of the furniture. It had not even been the scent of toddler that still lingered there, nor had it been the tiny clothes that were now inside taped boxes that would end up in a storage room until he had the heart to get rid of them, if ever.

No. It had not been any of the things he had expected it to be. It had not even been the absence of his ex-wife – or soon-to-be ex-wife, once he sent the forms over to Roberta that he had just signed, moments ago. It was not the overload of guilt at knowing that his son had died by his own hand. It had not been the realization that once he packed up James' room and mailed the forms to his attorney, that he would lose everything and everyone he had always fought to protect. Everything that had once been his reason for staying alive.

Not even the fact that today would have been James' first birthday had made Tony Stark crumble to his knees.

What had gotten to him; what had been the last straw that had sent him to the floor of James' room in a fit of loud and agonizing sobs had been the scrapbook: the pregnancy and baby's memory book he had helped Pepper create throughout many months – for more than a year, in fact!

He had not even known it was around him until he had lifted some boxes and the damned thing had fallen to the floor, only to open on a page that showed a picture of him and Pepper kissing, while sitting on the floor of the balcony of their old apartment, the sunset behind them, her hand resting on his and his on her large belly, and his free hand clearly held his pod at a distance to be able to take the perfect picture of what their lives had been for a while: carefree, happy, full of togetherness and love.

He remembered the day the picture had been taken. It had been before the crows had scared them out of their little home. It had been just a couple of weeks before Tony had opened his mouth to put his foot inside of it when he had practically accused Pepper of cheating on him with Happy Hogan, of all people. It had been shortly after he had proposed to her while dancing to a romantic tune during the company's annual holiday affair.

Pepper had been having trouble leaving the apartment due to the unpredictable effects of her pregnancy, and she had been pouting all day long because of it. Tony had tried his best to comfort her, but in her state, nothing short of having the baby much earlier than anticipated would had made her glad. It had not been until Pepper had decided to take a nap that Tony had come up with the idea of having a _winter picnic_ on their balcony at sunset since the redhead seemed to enjoy watching them whenever she had the chance, and when Pepper had woken up, she had done so to an already set mini-picnic just for the two of them.

Seeing this picture and remembering how happy they had once been, had only been the first stab to his already dying heart. He had not been able to stop himself from flipping from page to page in the scrapbook, and reminisced about how good they had had it in the past. He had eyed pictures of him measuring Pepper's belly on the wall as it grew throughout the months. He held back a sob when he had seen the progression of his son's development via ultrasounds. He had even chuckled lightly when he saw the silly annotations of Pepper's on the sides of some of the pictures and some of the mementos she had chosen to keep inside the book.

It all came back to him at the same time: the smells, the dreams, the memories, the emotions he had felt throughout the past year and a half, starting when he had rushed to the hospital in the middle of the night to find out that Pepper was with child. Ever since that day, a couple of days after Maya had broken up with him and had left him for good, his life had changed every single day. And while it was true that horrible things had also happened during this time, for the most part it had been great!

And then there had been that phone call to tell him that his son was dead. And he was yet to really cry for him – to really let his anger and sadness all come out. He had remained as strong as he had been able to be since at least one of them needed to be aware of what was happening to their child. One of the two had to perform the exhausting yet necessary tasks that came from losing a loved one and sign the forms needed for a deceased person to be released from a hospital, transferred to a funeral home and then be buried on Christmas Eve.

He had been strong for a long time now, strong enough for Pepper when she needed him to be. But now that she was gone and his home was empty save for him, and now that he was certain that his beloved was never coming back, he had the chance and the obligation to bring down the walls and weep – he had the right to apologize to his only son for inadvertently poisoning his tiny body with the virus that had slowly killed him.

And today, the first anniversary of his son's birth, seemed to be the perfect time to do all of this, and being at the nursery that he and Pepper had built for their little one, seemed to be the perfect location for the impeccable timing that his mourning demanded he take to let it free. This was how Tony Stark had found himself on the floor of his son's room, surrounded by pictures, boxes, clothes, toys and a broken heart. This was how Tony had not become aware that he was no longer alone in the home. This was how Tony had missed the moment when the figure that had been standing behind him had slowly begun approaching him, and this was how the inventor had not become aware that he had been stared at for a long time until an arm surrounded his neck from behind in the dimness of the baby's room.

xxxXXXxxx

_She could not believe her luck but the evidence before her was enough for her to start believing there was justice in the world. Her plan had worked, perfectly so, and even though it had been three days since she had dragged Pepper out of the airport in front of everyone's unsuspecting eyes, Whitney Stane was still in disbelief that her farfetched idea had worked. She had finally done it! She had outsmarted Tony Stark! And now that she knew she had all the time in the world to do as she pleased with the redhead, she allowed herself a few days to rest._

_ Pepper had woken up a few times since their arrival from the airport, but other than screaming and banging at the metal walls that encased her, the redhead had done nothing more than to sob and beg in the darkness of the coffin-like contraption she had her in. She had also fallen asleep crying sometimes, and she had pleaded for food and a drink on a few other occasions, but Whitney was yet to show her any mercy and it was doubtful that it would change at all. In the blonde's eyes, the redhead deserved this and more. In Madame Masque's eyes, Pepper Potts deserved to be punished and die._

_ It was almost the end of the third day of this successful abduction, and it was now time to have the fun the mask had told her she could have with the ginger. It would be a long time before anyone realized that Pepper was gone, which meant there would be days upon days of carrying out the long list of sentences and torture that Whitney Stane had carefully planned for Tony Stark's loved one. By the end of this, and before her last breath, Pepper Potts would know what it was like to lose everything and everyone she always cared about._

_ Pepper Potts would learn before she died, what a mistake she had made when she had allowed herself to fall in love with Tony Stark._

xxxXXXxxx

Even though he slightly jumped out of his skin when he felt the grip tighten around his chest and shoulders, he did not care enough to turn around to see who it was, to open his eyes or to even verbally challenge the trespasser in his home. He did not even care enough to try to fight back. If there was any God at all, Tony mused, and if this God cared about him at all, it had been He who had sent this intruder to his home to end his life. Maybe it was just Gene, maybe it was Rhodey – even though he was back at the Air Force for now – or maybe it was an enemy of his – whoever was left of them – and perhaps he had come here to end his suffering by slitting his throat

Oh, how he hoped this was about to be the case!

But when he felt the newcomer kneel behind him and the other arm encased him in a tight yet affectionate hug, the inventor partially froze in confusion. And when this same person rubbed the genius' left cheek with their nose, and the smell of their scent – of the familiar perfume – made it to his nostrils, Tony Stark sharply gasped. His eyes finally opened and he dared to look down at his chest where the small hands pressed against his heart, and when he saw the easily recognizable rings on the dainty left hand, Tony finally knew who it was that had snuck behind him.

And he could not believe his luck.

His breathing and heartbeat quickened but he refused to let his hopes up. He chanced a hand of his own on the left hand of his guest, and his fingers rubbed against the rings, just to make sure they were actually there and that he was not seeing things again. His fingertips then rubbed the smooth skin of her hands, trailed up her forearm all the way to her left shoulder. His hand then slid up her neck, to her face and he held her there so that when he turned his head to stare into her hazel eyes, she did not have a chance to run away from him – at least not yet – again.

Her eyes were as irritated as his and they too denoted how shattered she felt inside. He had seen that look on her features before, ever since James had died, but this was the first time that mixed in with the sorrow of losing their child was also the look of needing the comfort and love that only they could find in each other. The comfort he had wanted to give her all this time. The comfort he could see and sense she was willing to not only accept from him, but to give in return as well.

This HAD to be a dream!

His eyes stared at the rings once more as he recalled where he had last seen them, trying to make sense of this surreal sensation he currently felt. After Pepper had dropped off the divorce papers and the rings on the pinwheel necklace he had given her for her birthday a long time ago, Tony had been wearing the necklace with the rings until earlier today. When he had finally had the guts to sign all of the separation forms, he had taken off the necklace and the rings and had placed them on the kitchen island, next to the stack of divorce papers, before he had found himself walking inside the nursery room to say his final goodbye to his son. He knew for a fact that Pepper no longer had the rings with her, and the only way she could be wearing them right now was if she had come inside their home, picked them up from where he had left them, and deliberately placed them upon her hand.

It was clear to the ginger that Tony was having a difficult time believing what he was seeing – that she was truly there with him, so she gave him a tiny smile as she removed one of her arms from him to show him the necklace she had put back on herself when she had found it on the counter. She had also grabbed the divorce papers and had thrown them in the lit fireplace of the living room while she had been walking around the penthouse, searching for her husband's whereabouts. It had not been until she had heard the heart-wrenching sob she had never ever heard him make that she realized where Tony currently was.

She had hesitated for a second after she had heard him crying, and she had briefly doubted that what she was about to do was the best for _him_. At this point, and after much thought, she did not care if being with him was the best for her. What she had come to want even more, ever since she had received that anonymous message two days ago, was to do whatever would make _him_ happy; whatever would make things better for him and _not _for her. It had not been until she had received that unsigned note inside an unmarked envelope that she had finally seen the true error of her ways.

_She walked over to her mailbox, the one she had just gotten replaced and reinforced for security purposes, and she lazily unlocked it to check her mail. She did not receive much correspondence at this location, and since most of her financial responsibilities' statuses were delivered to her via electronic means, she rarely had much need to check in her box. Today was different, however, and between a couple of envelopes, the usual advertisements and the local stores' printed marketing efforts, she found a white envelope that immediately caught her eye in the midst of the brightly colored papers._

_ She frowned for a moment when she realized that even though the letter was sealed; it was not postmarked, meaning that someone other than her usual mailman had been able to access her secured box. She would later have to review the footage of the security cameras around her home to try to catch a glimpse of the would-be violator, but she could already narrow down the list of possible culprits who had dared to break into her mailbox to leave this mysterious letter to her. She stole a glance around herself to check if she was being watched, but when she saw nothing out of the ordinary near her land, she shook her head, locked her box and returned home._

_ As soon as she walked inside the living room, she filtered through the junk and grabbed the three envelopes she had received. She dumped the ads inside a recycle bin she kept near the front door for this exact purpose and she then sat on the couch to examine her mail. The first envelope contained the official welcome letter to the hall of fame of Empire State University and she just rolled her eyes at it before she tossed it to the side. The second envelope contained a written notification of her upcoming renewal of the vehicle registration and state safety inspection of her non-Stark issued automobile. The latter she actually needed to be sure she was able to drive a normal vehicle when she did not feel like calling attention to herself, so she placed that particular letter and envelope on the side table of the couch she currently sat on._

_ The third letter finally made it to her attention and she stared at it for a few seconds, internally debating if she should even open the damned thing at all. Her first thought was that perhaps Tony had sneaked in a message for her, just as he had tried many times before when she had locked herself in their room after the baby had died. She almost tore apart the envelope without reading its contents, but she stopped herself from doing so. She had not wanted to tear the paper because it could be Tony's, but because she could not stand to be reminded how much she had failed him by casting him aside without considering his feelings in the entire matter. She already had loads of pictures, gifts, letters and memories to remind her of how horrible of a partner she had been to him; she did not need one more aide memoire of her weakness._

_ It had taken her over two months by herself, extensive training and meditation sessions, talks with Rhodey, Jarvis, Howard, Trish, Virgil, Happy and Gene, and a lot of crying and self-pity parties she only attended herself, but she had finally realized that she had been selfish and arrogant and had treated Tony in ways no one – especially not her blue-eyed boy – should have been treated after everything they had done for her._

_ She no longer felt worthy of his words of encouragement and tokens of love. She no longer felt as if being with him was fair to them, as she had proven to be the worst thing that had ever happened to Tony Stark. All this time she had focused on how much her life had been affected by knowing him, being with him and loving him, but it had not been until recently that she had stopped to think how much her being around him had affected him as well._

_ He had moved mountains to make her happy, to be with her at all costs. He had lived with her and had supported her for months despite the knowledge that she was better off without knowing how he felt about her, and he had done whatever had been necessary to assure her comfort above his. He had taken her in and had cared for her when she had found out she was pregnant, even before he had known the baby was actually his. He had asked her to be his wife even after she had stomped over his heart a few times. There had not been one day, one action, one fucking __**thought **__that had come from Tony that was not aimed at making things better for her – even if at first the good intent had not been clear to her._

_ And what had she done in return? She did not dare to go there again, but what she did remind herself of was that Tony did not deserve to suffer the way he had, especially not by her hand. She was convinced that she did not deserve to be loved by him – by someone who had devoted his life to her to the point of ignoring all self-preservation instincts and personal dignity. It was not her who was better off without him. It was Tony Stark who was better off without her._

_ She stared at the letter again and tapped it on the back of her left hand. Once her guilt-ridden side had stated its peace, her hero side kicked in. What if it was a trap? What if the envelope contained a virus or a bioweapon? What if someone who was aware of the bounty had found her location and was trying to collect the fee? They had already taken out her son, this much she was aware of, and as far as she knew, Tony was still alive. It made sense to her that they would try to get her first now that she was no longer under the inventor's protection, as it was no secret that even with all her knowledge and war tactics abilities, Tony was still ahead of her when it came to fighting crime._

_ She pursed her lips and then lifted the envelope above her head so that the light of the room would filter through it to look inside. She stared at it from different angles, tapped it against her legs and then finally took it with her to her home lab. She was yet to decide what to do with the old armory building outside the home, and now that she was aware of what she had done when she had bought this property from Roberta, she did not have the heart to further alter the place that Tony had once called home. The abandoned warehouse and the burned armory inside of it was his, and it would be up to him to decide what to do with it._

_ This had not stopped her, however, from turning the basement into a smaller-scale replica of the Makluan Temple's lab. She had used the diagrams of the temple to recreate some of the most useful tools Tony held there, but since the equipment was mostly unique and one-of-a-kind, so far she had only been able to have the x-ray machine and some of the supercomputers delivered to the home. The rest would have to wait until Tony himself actually completed the work orders she had placed in, and she could only hope that he would build the equipment for her, no questions asked. If he chose not to fulfill the work orders, then she would be shit out of luck and she did not plan to complain about that even if she had come to rely on his tech to get her out of trouble or to battle the enemies they had made over time._

_ She walked down the basement stairs and made a beeline for the x-ray machine. She placed the envelope inside and ran all kinds of tests on the enigmatic piece of mail. She gave it almost half an hour to show results, and when she read the final result that the only thing the white envelope contained was a single piece of paper, she immediately grabbed it from the machine and opened it up. She then ran to her side of the basement lab, envelope and letter in hand, and put her education to use._

_ Just as the envelope, the paper was not signed, and the only noticeable identifier she found on the paper was a serial number she did not immediately recognize, printed on the top middle of the letter. There was also one line of text printed in the middle of it, so she could not even run a handwriting recognition algorithm on the words. There were no fingerprints either, the ink and paper were of normal use, and there was no DNA trace anywhere on it, so whoever had done this was a pro, and other than actually reviewing the security camera feeds for the past three days, she would have to just deal with the fact that all the information she was going to get for now out of the letter was to read its contents once and for all._

_ She eyed the serial number one more time and something in the back of her mind told her that she had seen it before. She shook her head a few times when something tried to come to the surface, but when she was not able to instantly recall where she had previously seen this number, she decided to let it go for now and just read the damned message. Her gaze trailed down to the middle of the sheet, read the line of text and she then frowned. She read it three more times and alternated between the number and the words, and when it finally dawned on her where she had read the serial code before, she held back a gasp._

_ "No," she shook her head. "It can't be!"_

_ She ran up the stairs and out of the basement, and did not stop her trek until she reached her home office room. She headed straight to the filing cabinet, unlocked it, pulled out the third drawer, found the file she was looking for and all but slammed it against her desk. She sorted through the papers inside of it until she found what she was desperate to find, and when she finally did so, she held side by side both the unsigned paper she had just received and the S.H.I.E.L.D. record of Tony's signed affidavit acknowledging his involvement in James's death._

_ The serial numbers matched._

_ And when she realized that the numbers matched, the printed words on the paper made sense to her. And she felt like throwing up._

_ She closed her eyes, hyperventilated a few times and then ran to her computer. She sat in the chair, pulled up the program she had been using to monitor S.H.I.E.L.D.'s database system and confirmed that other than herself, no one else had hacked into their servers. She then double-checked that her filing cabinet had been secured and intact when visitors had been in her home, and other than the Mandarin trying to do so, no one else would have been able to find the information regarding the serial number of their case with S.H.I.E.L.D., hidden in her cabinet. And she knew that Gene was still too embarrassed and hurt to physically visit her for a while._

_ She knew that she had given Tony a copy of the records of James's death, but she had removed the serial number from it so that he was not tempted to look up the information on his own. She knew that this would have not stopped him from hacking the S.H.I.E.L.D. database anyway, just as she had done herself, so she had designed the system that had been monitoring S.H.I.E.L.D. activity for weeks now. S.H.I.E.L.D. was yet to find they were being constantly monitored, and she was aware that they were now cognizant that a leak had taken place. But unless they just tried to pin it on her out of pure suspicion, she had made sure that they never found traces of her ever being there._

_ She had learned from the best, after all, and her experience and knowledge had allowed her to hack even her own servers at Stark Solutions tower and the Makluan Temple without setting off any alarms and without having to leave her new home. The records showed that Tony had not used their recon capable systems in forever, had not reactivated Extremis in him, and neither had he tried to make contact with S.H.I.E.L.D. or the World Security Council. Tony had really cut S.H.I.E.L.D. some major slack for a while now, but she refused to do the same for the organization that had only gotten in Tony's way. She was yet to really scrutinize the records of everything that S.H.I.E.L.D. knew about her and Tony, but right now she did not feel like bringing down the Helicarrier to teach Nick Fury a hard lesson of life: you did not hurt Tony Stark without feeling the wrath of Pepper Potts._

_ Back to the matter at hand._

_ Pepper triple-checked all her records and slowly ordered her thoughts and memories. There was absolutely no way that anyone other than her knew about this serial number, unless of course that person was already inside the Helicarrier – unless the sender of this note currently made the flying fortress their home. Rhodey was out of the question – he was not to join S.H.I.E.L.D. until May, and even if he had access to the database, the copy of the S.H.I.E.L.D. record he had confronted her about when he had visited her during Spring Break was a copy that lacked the serial number. She had kept the master copy for herself as she had known that this information could land either Rhodey, Tony or anyone else that cared about her, in S.H.I.E.L.D.'s jail, and this was the last thing she wanted for any of them._

_ She took a deep breath, pressed her back against the chair and stared at the paper once more. Whoever had sent her this message knew what they were speaking of, and this fact made the words on the paper that much more powerful to her. The message should have not been news to her – she should have known this to be the case, but she had not wanted to believe that on this issue she had been in the wrong, too. She knew it was a possibility, she knew it was absolutely possible that she had believed S.H.I.E.L.D.'s words over Tony's, but now she __**knew**__ why she had not wanted to believe his innocence to be true: she had not wanted to feel the temptation to go back to him, to ask him to forgive her, and beg him to let her be with him again._

_ The belief that he had lied to her, that he had not been an innocent party in this S.H.I.E.L.D. maze, was the only thing keeping her from interfering in his life once more. She wanted to be stronger, she wanted to let him be happy for once, but the moment these words she had just read repeated in her head, she closed her eyes and cried. She cried because she had known, all this time, that the phrase written on the paper: "He didn't know," was everything but a lie._

xxxXXXxxx

There was much to say, but neither dared to speak. For now all they could do was to hold one another and cry together for their loss. She held her husband with everything she had, and she hoped that her presence and her soft caresses made it easier on him. He held her waist and cried like a child, on her chest and lap, and with every sound of pain that came from him, she felt guiltier than before. Without asking, without even saying a word or accusing her for her flaws, Tony had welcomed her back into his life, and even if she knew that she was not deserving of it, she stayed with him all night until he found peace and sleep. She would always stay with him now, even if she had to live with the knowledge that he was too good for her. And he would stay with her, as long as he lived, even if he would always remember that their son had died because of him.

And for the first time in months, Tony and Pepper fell asleep in each other's arms – after silently accepting and forgiving their common guilt – and on the same bed. _Their_ bed.

* * *

**A/N:** Rejoice, my Faithful Readers! This is the last chapter of the entire series where Tony and Pepper are mad at each other! Congratulations for making it this far! And now, a message from my Beta Reader and hubby, Teen Tyrant:

_When you read Miss Starfire's fics without reviewing, you bring down her confidence as a writer. When you bring down her confidence as a writer, you deprive yourself of story updates. When you deprive yourself of story updates, you become bored. When you become bored, you take up juggling. When you take up juggling, you attempt juggling on top of a fence. When you attempt juggling on top of a fence, you fall into a junkyard filled with guard dogs. And when you fall into a junkyard filled with guard dogs, you end up in a hospital for six weeks. Don't end up in a hospital for six weeks! Leave a review!_

He really likes those commercials. ^_^


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